see, here i would have guessed just the opposite. My thinking being every aircraft was deemed more precious and thus many more hours spent trying to avoid it from being written off would be spent in the Delta more so then the UK where a replacement aircraft could be shuttled easier to replace losses.
They
arrived in the Delta via the Takoradi Air Bridge in a sorry state
from new after several thousand miles in sandy, hot air
Once in the Delta - and the Route itself had a high attrition rate! - they immediately had to be FULLY serviced, often right down to engine rebores, before being issued to squadrons.
There was a HUGE number of aircraft put into the Delta - remember, it even had its
own Maintance Units, it's
own OTUS and its
own Fighter School at El Ballagh for WWII-era "Top Guns"!...but in turn, the environment took a huge toll; if you search, there are a couple of threads here on AHF dealing with the
Luftwaffe's rate of serviceability issues in North Africa - the RAF
would have been equally as bad - EXCEPT they
had that developed support infrastructure in the Delta. The MUs were even able to make their OWN mods to aircraft marks, like the "slimline" Vokes they created for the Spitfire VC, and
create types like the
very high altitude Spitfires they created in the Delta to chase down German Ju86P-2 high-level photo recce aircraft...
when the new pressurized HF MkVIIS sent specially out from the UK weren't up to the job!
Just somewhere a maintenance engineer would have to make this call and have his mechanics role placed accordingly. Was there a manual or memo showing him (maintenance engineer ), what specs. would help him determine this, or was it more a personal ability (mechanical aptitude) to determine an aircrafts fate
If it
wasn't thoroughly obvious at squadron level...remember, these WEREN'T guys that were following manuals slavishly unless they were required for a
specific job, fitter-sergeants and ORs went through a LONG technical course, even longer if they had been PRE-war servicemen...where they'd be only too aware of what was on their "shelves", then there was always the MUs in the Delta to check with, or send the aircraft back to. But I'm not going to paraphrase a
lot of John James here - you need to get your hands on a copy of
The Paladins, at least two chapters deal with the training of technical grades and how it was done and the training schemes were expanded.
Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs....
Lord, please keep Kevin Bacon alive...