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92cover two watches, meant that No 1 Sqn%u2019s manning was stretched verythin. RN servicing procedures were followed but it took a few days tosettle into the routine of deck operations and the challenge of working atnight on a pitching ship using red-filtered torches.11 Although thegroundcrew had access to onboard workshops, maintenance was aconstant struggle requiring careful choreography in the hangar and, whilecontingency servicing was employed with the minimum of paperwork, itwas soon decided to deploy an additional twenty tradesmen to assist inroutine servicing and turn-rounds. In the event, however, only fourarmourers had joined the squadron before hostilities ended.In addition to the remaining No 18 Sqn personnel embarked on theNorland, small, but significant engineering ground parties were deployedto the Falkland Islands drawn from the Tactical Communications Wing,the Joint Helicopter Support Unit and the RAF Explosive OrdnanceDisposal and Aircraft Battle Damage Repair (ABDR) organisations.12AvailabilityServiceability across all aircraft types remained high throughout thecampaign, with four or five of the six deployed Harrier GR3s beingavailable most days. Availability of the Victor tanker force was evenbetter, with very few operational sorties being lost to unserviceabilitieswhile the reliability of the sole remaining Chinook was legendary.13 Thatthe flying effort was generally much greater than the planned wartimerate (by a factor of 2.6 for the Hercules in May)14 speaks volumes for theprofessionalism and ingenuity of the groundcrews, both in-theatre andback in the UK, as well as for the legacy of high peacetime standards.The same cannot be said of the Argentinean forces that faced growingavailability problems across a number of aircraft fleets as the warprogressed, at least one Skyhawk unit being stood down in May becauseof low serviceability.15SparesAs was discovered during the Gulf War the supply pipeline rapidlybecame congested as operations developed such that urgent spares weredelayed or mislaid and large stocks of unserviceable repairables built up.The Victor tankers in particular began to suffer from a shortage ofserviceable LRUs, a problem that was only solved by the deployment ofa Transportable Air Radio Defect Investigation System (TARDIS) fromWaddington that repaired 91 LRUs in-situ over the period 9-25 June.16