Warbird Information Exchange

I remember a story told me by someone who worked for Grumman during the Vietnam war. An A6 Intruder was damaged by a SAM and after recovery was found to have a piece of the SAM warhead embedded in the wing spar. On ship a repair to the spar was fashioned that included reinforcing plates that covered the piece of warhead allowing the aircraft to complete missions before rotating back to Grumman for a full rebuild. Now the questionable part, supposedly back at Grumman given the pace of rebuilding damaged aircraft and the fact that the piece of the warhead was so completely fused to the spar an engineering study was made that determined to replace the temporary repair with a permanent one still leaving the war head fragment in place! True or urban myth?

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"I can't understand it, I cut it twice and it's still too short!" Robert F. Dupre' 1923-2010 Go With God.

So, they were able to weld and rivet around a SAM 'warhead', and it didn't go off (either low order or high order)?

I just don't see how that's even possible.

In addition, I don't see how it would be possible for an explosive package to 'fuse' to a piece of metal without an explosion or fire to begin with.

My vote is myth.

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are you saying a fragment from an SA-2 warhead (250 lbs right?) was embedded in the spar in such a way that it's removal would have compromised flight worthiness?

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-recovering Viper crew chief
-AWACS driver/soon-to-be A-26 driver
-displaced Philadelphian

In England we have a term for this.. B*****s!
I agree that the lads on the carrier might have done a repair on the spar that might not have been 100% as per the manufacturer, but nobody would leave anything like that on an aircraft.

Rgds Cking

Most likely would have been reduced to spares and then deep-sixed.

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Defending Stearmans on WIX since Jeff started badmouthing them back in 2005.

push it over the side.

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" I am a nobody in aviation, but somebody to my family."

Push it over the side.

I can't say that I believe an explosive warhead fragment was left in the aircraft structure. But perhaps that is not what they meant.

It's worth pointing out that explosive bonding is a welding method for dissimilar metals using high explosives. Perhaps they were looking at a rare instance where the metal fragments were fused.
http://www.highenergymetals.com/Enginee ... 20Page.pdf

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"They done it, they done it, damned if they ain't flew." December 17, 1903

i mean this is not the same but...i work on guitar amplifier and synthesizers, quick road repair often leave lots of rough solder in places it doesn't really belong. field repairs are field repairs i suppose.

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-recovering Viper crew chief
-AWACS driver/soon-to-be A-26 driver
-displaced Philadelphian

Is it possible that it was an SA-7 instead? The warhead on that is much smaller - 1.15kg.