Sidebar, but hydraulic related. When I was at Ellsworth my hydraulic guys came to me with a hydraulic problem. They told me an aircraft had a hydraulic leak and there was no way they could get to it. I told them, in that case we'll call Davis Montana Air Force base and send the plane to the boneyard for scrap. With that leak we can no longer fly the plane.
That put it in perspective for them and they got it fixed. But they had to cut out five perfectly good lines to gain access to the leaking one, repair that one, and then repair the five they cut out. All the tubing was titanium, which has no "tweaking" ability. It has to be bent to perfect fit or it won't work. The lines are then connected with special shrink fittings that were stored in liquid nitrogen.
Doug in SW IA
