Gutersloh in the 70's, when 19 & 92 where there with Lightnings
Whilst a big fan of the Frightening when it comes to air displays, the above quote brought back less pleasant memories. As many will recall, the late sixties/early seventies saw quite a few losses due to engine bay fires. These tended to be caused either by pinhole corrosion in the hydraulic pipes or leaks from the fuel system couplings.
With 19 and 92's aircraft, there built up a large backlog of engineering modifications, particularly to the FRS couplings in the fuel system piping. Gütersloh's second-line servicing organisation couldn't cope so AEF, 431 MU (Brüggen) was given the task of incorporating all of the backlog of mods during a Base 2 servicing. Trouble was the mod packages amounted to a month's man-hours for the MU team, but we were only given a two-week window to fulfil the work. So the powers-that-be decreed we would arrive at Gütersloh on a Sunday and work 14hrs per day for fourteen consecutive days. We usually managed to meet the target, but then had to wait with bated breath whilst NDT x'rayed every coupling to make sure alignment was within 0.005" in any direction. Any misalignment meant no time-off or return home until corrective actions had been made. Then we would have the magnificent reward of a weekend-off before returning for another stint. Happy days (not).