It appears the loss of the Marine KC-130 comes down to bad maintenance on a prop blade…

Sloppy maintenance work at an Air Force depot was at the root of a tragic crash of a Marine Corps Reserve KC-130T that resulted in the deaths of 16 service members in July 2017.

Full Article, HERE. Of course they say it will never happen again, but dammit, it SHOULDN’T have happened the first time!

16 people lost their lives over this ‘mistake’. And once again, this points out how differences in requirements, e.g. operational/situational like over water, corrosion, etc. between services doesn’t make for good combined maintenance facilities. 

My personal opinion, we should never have gone away from Navy NADEP maintaining Navy/Marine acft, because those folks know the requirements and strictly adhere to them, especially the corrosion issues.

I know, I know, cost savings, yada, yada, but those people ‘saving’ that money don’t have to put their butts in the seats of those airplanes like our Sailors and Marines do every day! As of today, there have been now 21 non-combat losses of acft this year in the Navy and Marine Corps. That is WAY too many, and I can’t help but wonder how many of those are maintenance related because the birds are old, need rework, and parts are getting hard to come by, but the OPTEMPO isn’t slowing down and giving the troops a break so that they can actually FIX the crap that’s broke.

And that extends across not only the air side, but ships and submarines. Deferred maintenance isn’t the answer, stopping the operations and FIXING problems should be the priority!