Originally Posted by
luffers79
Any truth in this ?
We had a Wing Commander Flying at Buckeburg around 1954 who was later promoted to Air Commodore i/c The Queen Flight. Apparently Prince Philip was to take a helicopter somewhere but took the Reserve a/c instead because something was U/S after engine start. Air Commodore J.B. took it up later to do an air test (after it was repaired ?) & was killed (? Rotor blade failure ?). Lucky Prince Philip ?.
I was an young RAF corporal fitter on the Queens Flight. I inspected the main shaft of the helicopter during a minor service. After the service it had a electrical failure and I was tasked with changing the generator outside on the pan. It had rained and someone had spilt oil on the serving steps, I slipped and dropped the new item. It did not appear to be damaged apart from a concrete scuff mark but I rejected it.
The stores did not have another. HRH due to fly somewhere either that day or the next, the other aircraft was not available and he was apparently not amused and had to travel by road. I received a bollocking for dropping it and was praised for not fitting it. The next time the aircraft flew was the fatal flight to Westlands with The Captain of the Queen’s Flight , the Chief Engineer, chief helicopter pilot and chief navigator.
They were all lovely people who had time of day for us fitters. It was sometime before I knew that the shaft had failed inside the gearbox so I could not have seen any crack. The experience led me to civilian career in Quality Management. The technical cause was known as “grinding abuse “. During an grinding operation at Westlands the factory experienced a intermittent power supply.
The grinding machine had three electrical motors, a big one driving the large wheel, one driving the work spindle and a small one driving the suds or coolant pump. The operator was slow in removing the cut the inertia of the big wheel carried on, but the flow of coolant stopped the work locally overheated the coolant came back on and quenched the material resulting in a local hard spot.in service this led to a fatigue crack developing.
The fleet was grounded and one outer faulty shaft was found. There is a nondestructive test for machining abuse called Nital etch inspection which if not properly carried out can result in failures from hydrogen embrittlement. At the time Westlands did not carry this out on the balance of risks, they do now. I have used this story to stop cost savings on high strength steel parts by dropping the requirements for etch inspection during my subsequent career.