The RN engineers are more than capable of getting up to speed quickly. Don’t forget that Culdrose has the Merlin Training Facility and that is the best you’ll find anywhere, manned in the most part by guys who have operated the aircraft in the real world. There is also the Westland Customer Training facility in Yeovil, which means guys can be trained there as well as Culdrose. Where are the Junglies based? Oh that’s right, Yeovilton.
With the untimely demise of the Harrier there are numbers of personnel who are being redistributed to Culdrose and Yeovilton, so it wouldn’t be a work of great genius to relocate Merlin trained supervisors and lads with the Junglies at Yeovilton to bring the newly converted Seaking guys up to speed. So after one “out of preference area” draft the Culdrose guy returns to his preferred area and all is well.
Even with the dodgy (don’t get me started) AET set up that the RN now use, the “multi-purpose” maintainer ethos still persists, unlike the RAF who are quite “trade constrained”, there’s no place for “trade prima donnas” on the back of a type 23. What this means in the real world is that it is not unusual to find guys in the Navy who have worked on every aircraft type (fixed and rotary) in the inventory at that time (and then some), and helped every other trade when they needed to. (i.e. type flexible)
Don’t forget that the MK3 aircraft are flown in the “RAF way” at the moment, with emphasis on decanting the major dross work back to base (Benson, although usually Culdrose), while the guys at the front fly/fight the cab ( if it works for you etc etc). Culdrose already does all the “depth” MK3 work at workshops and MDMF, so to actually operate the aircraft is not a big jump in capability, “knowledge” wise, we do know the aircraft.
The training issue is mostly about getting a MK4 Seaking guy trained to work on a MK3 Merlin whilst keeping the ability to deploy, that’s easy too, just break the swap into flight/sqdn sized chunks, so 845 are still Seaking, while 846 convert and train and so on. This leaves you able to deploy a joint RAF and Navy helicopter force should it be needed during the transition.
As for the conversion of the MK3 to a marinised a/c, well someone has already mentioned manual folding on the Chinook um... (that’s how we did the Wessex but those Merlin blades are big), the folding head is actually a simple fit and the electronics should be easy to retrofit, which means that the folding tail is the only major structural mod required. All of a sudden the marinisation doesn’t seem so difficult (don’t mention MK3 corrosion resistance compared to MK1, it’s a red herring), which leaves the weight issue.
You have to ask yourselves if we are talking about a lift capability equal to the Chinook or the Seaking or are we actually filling a role somewhere in between. When we need heavy lift, we call on the Yanks with their CH53 (you know what I’m talking about) or the Russian Mil, so we are actually talking “medium” lift. The fact is that the MK3, even with the mods embodied will be able to fill the troop seats and do its job, add to all of this speculation and guess work the fact that you don’t actually know how much the mods will weigh and therefore what effect that will have, means that to say, “it won’t be able to do task A” is just meaningless speculation.
Don’t forget the contribution the Carson modded Seakings have made in theatre and if the Seaking is that bad why are the Yanks re-engineering over a 100 S61T variants (Carson fit standard) to fill the worldwide “medium” lift hole in their capability. We all know the Merlin is more capable than the Seaking and Puma (lift wise), and it certainly wees all over the NH90 and the H92, so that must mean that we have, when all’s said and done, a pretty good medium lift aircraft.
That’s that sorted, now the England football team………(laugh)
Cheers