Changing the direction of the subject slightly, I found this thread on The Telegraph website, seems the lack of Nimrod spares is by far from a new problem...
RAF: Nimrod spares problems
Posted by Claves at 09:46 on 04 Jun 2007
Whilst recognising the terrible tragedy that befell one of our Nimrods over Afghanistan, the present media fuss about lack of spares is about nearly 40 years behind the times.
I remember when the Nimrods replaced the Shackleton M3 Phase 3s (4 turning 2 burning) at RAF Kinloss in 1969 . A briefing session was held for the all the erks. A engineer from Command HQ declared that on this aircraft, unlike the Shackletons, 'robbing' would not be necessary. It took some time for the laughter to die down.
In the early 70s a fine example of lack of spares occurred when a light alloy casting that had not been provisioned, broke. Eventually a spare was obtained: from a scrapped Aerolineas Argentinas Comet IV at Buenos Aires airport. God only knows what the RAF had to pay for it.
A really serious situation occured in the mid-70s when some stores wallah,detailed to dispose of the scrapped Comet IVs enthusiastically also sold off all Section 26DL parts in the RAF Stores catalogue. These were of course also all the Nimrod MR1 spares. Did they get them back, I wonder? Maybe not.
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/claves/jun...s_problems.htm