Cannot remember which Tornado unit I was on at the time, but some bright spark saw gearbox oil in the RAF supply network and being clever and resourceful decided that gearbox oil must be for vehicles and as the Army had control of vehicle consumables the item was duly transferred to Army control, so one less item to be stored and managed by the RAF supply chain.
On ordering some oil for the Wing Sweep Actuator Gearboxes for said Tornado I was informed that item was Army controlled and for vehicle use only, on asking who had decided this, no answer forthcoming, and were they aware that a Tornado aircraft was now grounded by this daft notion, silence from other end, it took a while for some clever people to try and get ground use oil back into the RAF supply chain so it could be issued and used for the only ‘vehicle’ it was used in.
While on deployment with 18 Squadron we ordered a part and two of us were dispatched to pick it as it was weekend and supply were unable to deliver within the timescale required, On turning up Saturday morning we were met by a young lad who said they could not locate item as the stores computer was down, we said “why not use the Kardex system”, to which his response was “what is that”, when explained that it was the supply chain manual backup he had no idea as he was never told about it, luckily we knew where it was and just hoped it was being kept updated, it was and we were soon on our way back to our lovely field.