Acros By AMC(AW) Patrick Curl
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uring a spring and summer deployment, my EA-6B Prowler squadron split operations between the carrier and a forward air base in Iraq. Half of our maintenance department was based ashore, with the rest remaining aboard ship. I’ve always heard that having a lax attitude can lead to a series of unfortunate events. I would face that problem before I realized it. Our squadron was fortunate because a Marine air wing deployed in Iraq was fully up and running, including full ground and AIMD support on station. Although the maintenance-support structure at the base already was in place, we faced numerous challenges every day to meet our flight schedule. As with every foreign-deployment site, nearly every procedure has to be developed from scratch. Some procedures or functions already are established and become routine. Even though you’ve operated at a base for a couple of months, occasionally you’ll find procedures that you didn’t realize existed and now are getting ignored. Since our squadron was split, we usually had only two jets on station at any time. The missions our aircrews were flying were, at a minimum, three and a half hours long, and sometimes they would go as long
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I’ve always heard that having a lax attitude can lead to a series of unfortunate events.
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