Another century, another place, but the Halton graduates of the 1930s proved masters of make and mend in the grim years that lay ahead. For example, they patched the leading edge and designed, fabricated and fitted a reinforcement plate to the mainspar in this Fairey Battle -- in temperatures of -10C in their makeshift airfield at Berry-au-Bac, France, May 1940. Note the civvy registration on the Coles crane, which my father recalled was requisitioned from a London company and taken to France with the BEF.
The mainplane was replaced, the 250lb bombs on the right reloaded, and the aircraft returned to service two days later but in vain, like most of the wretched Battles it was shot down on its second sortie. Maybe it's impossible to carry out such work on today's aircraft though perhaps the Ukrainian engineers would say otherwise.