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Crash Disabled Damaged Aircraft Recovery team provide Heavy Lifting

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Shane S. Karp
  • 177th FW/PA
More than 20 members of the 177th Fighter Wing Crash Disabled Damaged Aircraft Recovery team participated in training, Sept. 19, involving crane lifting an F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft at Naval Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum, New Jersey.

The 177 FW CDDAR team is a secondary duty for these airmen, and includes specialists from almost every Air Force Specialty Code within the maintenance squadron.

"The training is necessary for completing a tri-annual certification, and the real-world use is in the event an F-16 is immobile and needs to be lifted by a crane and moved off the runway area," said Tech. Sgt. Robert Taylor, a CDDAR team member. "Our main goal is to remove the aircraft as quickly and safely as possible, without causing any secondary damage,"

"We haven't had to use this maneuver in a real-world scenario, and hopefully never do, but this team is very capable of handling it," said Master Sgt. Chris Foye, a 177 FW CDDAR team member. 

"In the event a plane went down, we need airmen that are familiar from each component," Taylor said. "Not everybody is specialized in everything, but everyone is specialized in something."