By Gary Rice

It sounds like the work schedule aboard a Navy ship at sea – up to 12 hours a day and seven days a week. But faced with an unusually heavy workload, the 17 employees in the CH-46 Transmission Shop worked those hours during the last quarter of the fiscal year at the Naval Air Depot (NADEP) Cherry Point. There were just too many transmissions to overhaul and repair during normal work shifts. They had a quarterly quota to meet, and they were determined to make it.

NADEP Cherry Point provides maintenance, engineering, and logistics support on a wide variety of aircraft, engines, and components for all branches of the U.S. armed forces. The depot’s mission is to support the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) in providing the American warfighter with absolute combat power through mastery of six broad categories of naval aviation technologies: sensors, aircraft, weapons, training, launch and recovery, and communications. Employing almost 4,000 people, the depot is the only source of repair within the continental United States for many jet and rotary wing engines. It is the Navy’s center of excellence for rotary wing aircraft, providing engineering and logistics support for all Navy helicopters.

“With the war on terror going on, the helicopter squadrons are flying maximum hours under especially arduous conditions,” Harold Windham, Aircraft Mechanical Parts Repairer, said. “That means more of a workload for us, but this a good shop with a great bunch of people, and we’re prepared to do what we have to do to get the job done.”

“These transmissions come in here with 1100 hours on them,” Jesse Crank, Aircraft Mechanical Parts Repairer Mechanic, said, “and they’re worn out. Their gears and bearings are worn, and many parts have to be replaced. Since we can’t usually get new parts, we sometimes have to disassemble three transmissions to get one good one. It can be tedious work, but it’s a challenging job, and I really like it.”

In their jobs in Building 133, Windham and Crank repair and overhaul the aft transmission of the CH-46 helicopter. The work is complicated and technical, and it takes about 20 hours of labor to overhaul each transmission.

“Every one is different, with its own characteristics,” Windham said. “Each one presents its own set of problems, but we take care of whatever needs to be done. It’s as good as new when we send it back to the squadron.”

Windham has been at the depot for 13 years and has been in the Transmission Shop for seven years. When he first started at the depot, he worked in the Cleaning Shop, also in Building 133. Before that, he worked as a truck driver for Henry’s Tackle in Morehead City; and he has done a lot of mechanical repair work, including transmission work, on cars at several local auto dealerships.

“Trans work on cars doesn’t compare to helos,” Windham explained, “but it did give me the mechanical background for this job.”

Originally from Tennessee, Windham has lived in North Carolina since 1972. He lives with his wife and two children, and his hobbies include fishing and bird hunting.

“I watch a lot of NASCAR,” he said, “and I do a lot of yard work.”

Crank has worked at NADEP for 19 years and spent his first two years working on OV-10s. Prior to the depot, he spent four years in the Air Force as a mechanical ground support technician. He served in Florida, Korea, Okinawa, and Viet Nam. He also worked as a meat cutter at the air station commissary store, and it was while working in that job that he learned about the civil service opportunities at the depot. He says his goal is to eventually get into Quality Assurance.

“I take a lot of pride in what I do because I know there are lives on the line,” Crank said. “The way I look at it, I do the job as if I was doing it for myself. If I was going to fly in the helicopter myself, I would want the transmission to be perfect.”

Since 1996, Crank has also been involved in the H-53 program. He has acquired expertise on the H-53 gearbox and travels all over the world with field teams to fix H-53 clutch assemblies.

“After 9-11, nobody wanted to travel,” he said, “so I went out eight times in six months.”
Crank says he is a NASCAR fan who enjoys the football and baseball play-offs.

“I used to golf,” he said, “but now I’m mainly into fishing.”

“They’re great guys,” David Smith, Transmission Shop Supervisor, said of Windham and Crank. “They’ll do anything for the good of the depot and the fleet. They only have to be asked once, and the job will get done. The whole shop is like that. They’re all great artisans. This shop stuck together and worked long hard hours last quarter. I expect the pace will pick up again this quarter, and we’ll do whatever we need to do to provide a quality product to the fleet.”

Photo: In the NADEP Cherry Point CH-46 Transmission Shop in Building 133, Harold Windham (left) and Jesse Crank discuss work pertaining to a CH-46 aft transmission they overhauled. (Photo by Gary Rice)