Taiwan P-3s Hit The Road

Posted 15 September 2009

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A P-3 Orion travelled nearly 2,000 miles last October without leaving the ground. The Orion, the first of a dozen used P-3Cs purchased by Taiwan, was carried by flatbed trailer from the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan AFB, in Tucson, Arizona, to the Lockheed Martin facility in Greenville, South Carolina, where it will receive standard depot-level maintenance, new wings, and an avionics upgrade in preparation for delivery. To move the aircraft, a transport cradle based on a standard piece of assembly tooling was modified to hold the fuselage. The aircraft was then disassembled and loaded onto nine trucks. All twelve aircraft for Taiwan were determined to be nonflyable as a result of structural fatigue.

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