PHILIPPINE SEA –
Machinery Repairman 1st Class Adam Lachman, repair division leading petty officer, from East Meadow, New York, and Machinery Repairman 2nd Class Kyle Martin, from Houston, led Ronald Reagan’s machine repair team in redesigning and fabricating a tool that helped to repair parts of the ship’s arresting gear wire system, May 30.
“I like to live by the statement: ‘If we can’t fix it, only God can,’” Lachman said. “There’s never been a repair that Ronald Reagan’s machine shop couldn’t complete.”
The tool, a valve seat wrench, was originally manufactured by Lockheed Martin. Other carriers and shore facilities had not successfully managed to recreate the tool. However, on May 27, a loose bolt was found within an arresting gear’s hydraulic systems, causing critical damage.
“Our number two wire was down and it was down hard,” said Chief Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Launch/Recovery Equipment) Steven Castro, V-2 Maintenance Control leading chief petty officer. “The number two wire is the target wire on board CVN-76. The target wire is everything. That’s what the pilots are aiming for, and it hurt having it down—even for just two days.”
Castro said that without the number two wire, the number three wire would have “taken an extreme beating for several days,” requiring more maintenance and severely disrupting the V-2 maintenance team’s normal cycles.
The valve seat wrench Lachman and Martin were tasked to create was the only way to access the damaged part within the system. With the number two wire on the line, the repair team kept their machines running continuously for three days, working through nights and into the mornings.
“What’s amazing about what they did is a lot of aircraft carriers in the fleet have failed to extract that seat out of that [valve bowl assembly],” Castro said. “We were told basically, ‘Good luck. If you get it, good on you guys. If you don’t, we’re not surprised.’”
The missing tool was their biggest challenge to completing the repair, Castro said. That’s why he asked the machine repair team for help fabricating it.
“[Lachman and Martin] didn’t hesitate at all,” Castro said. “They came up and scoped it out, and they said ‘We’ve got this’ from the get-go, with no hesitation whatsoever.”
Not only did the team successfully recreate the tool, it was also the first of its kind to successfully complete the arresting gear maintenance. Additionally, their critical thinking skills led to them crafting a tool that was more efficient than the original design.
“As soon as we received the drawing, we realized how big of a part it was,” Martin said. “We designed something about 35 percent smaller because we knew we had to carry it up to the 0-3 level. If we started with the original size, then it would’ve taken an extra three days to make—almost a week in total.”
A few days after they completed the tool, Capt. Daryle Cardone, commanding officer of Ronald Reagan, expressed his gratitude towards the two Sailors on the 1MC, explaining their efforts to the crew and emphasizing the impact they had on flight operations.
“It feels good to receive some recognition for the work we did. I’ll take some when I get some,” Lachman said. “But I do believe [Martin] and [Hull Maintenance Technician 3rd Class] Austin Gilbert deserve most of it.”
Both Lachman and Martin credit Gilbert for being on constant standby to weld between the periods they machined the tool. During the three days of work, it was a back and forth operation amongst the repair stations in the shop.
“Gilbert did a lot of welding for a good part of this,” Martin said. “I remember taking it off the lathe while it was still hot and directly handing it over to him for welding.”
Lachman and Martin take pride in their machining skills. Lachman expressed that as long as he is in the Navy, he will keep machining. Martin is proud of his work so far on Ronald Reagan, and while he plans to continue it elsewhere, he stressed the importance of learning one’s craft.
“It makes me feel like 45 bucks an hour,” Martin said with a smile. “I don’t plan on making the military my life career, but I do plan on continuing to machine. Just knowing that our standards, knowledge and capability of power have been set even higher, based on other carriers and shore commands, makes me sit back and smile. It feels nice that when people need something, they reach out to us first.”
While maintenance is an important skill for every Sailor on a forward-deployed aircraft carrier, some of the bigger jobs are saved for outside entities to manage. Lachman believes that a well-trained repair team can tackle a lot of those bigger jobs with some trust and investment.
“I think we need to come back to relying on Sailors to conduct self-repair,” Lachman said. “Our machines in our shop can make parts to fix themselves. This is pure ownership.”
The new-and-improved valve seat wrench is now installed on the deck next to the arresting gear engine it was used to repair, in case it needs to be used again. While the original purpose of the tool remains, it now also stands as a symbol of the ingenuity and craftsmanship of the Ronald Reagan machine repair shop team, bearing an engraved name plate with the words: “Manufactured by Lachman Martin.”
Petty Officer 2nd Class Timothy Dimal is with USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) public affairs.
