Re: Control cable incident(s)
AA62 & Smudge
I was a SNCO propulsion (sounds much posher than 'engines' ) trade supervisor on 48 at the time of the control input 'interferences' and was personally involved, along with airframe SNCO colleagues, in three (or four?) investigations after aircrews reported these un-commanded control inputs. At the time, each instance was considered a potentially serious technical issue.
Many man-hours were spent in efforts to find the cause, including extensive investigation/replacement of elevator booster packs, bleeding of hydraulic circuits and a detailed inspection of control system components. One particular line of investigation led to the discovery of damage to a non-metallic pulley wheel on a cable tensioner situated above the 'hogs trough' in the roof of the forward part of the freight bay. The grooved pulley had a piece of its rim missing; an extensive search to find the broken piece was fruitless. We suspected that the broken piece probably fell onto the cargo that had been unloaded before we began our work. No other fault was found on this, or any of the other reported instances that I was involved in.
After the loadmaster situation became general knowledge in the ground engineering flight office, it was mooted that the damaged pulley could possibly have been caused by a person standing on the cargo, then giving a sharp downward pull on the cable running through the tensioners, the side-loading of that force damaging the pulley in the process. I never experienced another instance of a damaged tensioner pulley up to that time, or subsequently, in my ten years on the Hercules fleet. I have no knowledge of any incident allegedly involving cable cutters.