The potential knock-on to operations from these fuel leaks is a loss of one electronic optics [video-equipped] aircraft in theatre with the very real possibility of having nothing at all to replace it with,” one officer at Kinloss said.
There was relief verging on jubilation at the discovery that the civilian company MPI had “a crack squad of fuel leak fixers”, which normally worked on civilian airliners, and in February it was called in to work on XV230. A few weeks later,
QinetiQ reported the results of its investigation, concluding that the aircraft was simply too old, and being pushed too hard, leading to excessive strain on the airframe. QinetiQ found that “the aggressive tempo with which we are flying the jets in stark temperature shifts is contributing to our leak headache,” one officer noted in an email.
XV230 resumed flying in March. But no sooner had it done so than the leaks returned.
In the six months before the explosion, there were more than 50 fuel leaks on Nimrods, at least 12 of them on XV230. During June and July, it was the first RAF aircraft to be put through a new system of “equalized maintenance” designed to save time and money which cured only five of the 12 leaks.
The explosion confirmed all the worst fears. Immediately, the hot air pipe in the bomb bay and the fuel tank at the base of the starboard wing were taken out of use on the rest of the fleet and within two days they were back up in the air. Even before the decision was made to start flying again another Nimrod suffered a fuel leak. A
Serious Fault Signal in October 2006 reported leaks with three aircraft, one of them the day after the explosion during refueling on the ground.
On 13 October, fuel was found to be leaking out of two of the tanks of a Nimrod. It was kept flying with the two tanks put out of use but a week later a third tank burst leaking fuel into the bomb bay. Then on 8 November, a Nimrod suffered a major leak during mid-air refuelling with hundreds of gallons of fuel running along the fuselage and pouring out of the rear of the aircraft. Pressure built up in the air-to-air refuelling system to twice the normal limit. Fuel flooded the bomb bay, which had to be opened twice to get rid of it. The RAF suspended air-to-air refuelling briefly, introducing new operating procedures limiting which tanks could be used. But a month later, another Nimrod lost nearly 1,000 gallons of fuel as a result of a leak during mid-air refuelling.