Atomicmurph

Not sure I understand the hostility here..... the F-14 at the end of her life had no "New" parts available. What parts were ready as spares had been through "I" level maintenance (where they also had no new replacement components) or "D" level maintenance 10-15 years ago and just sat on a shelf. Also, remember on a ship you have very limited space for warehousing all those spare parts. You have to also stock all the parts needed for F-18's, S-3's, H-60's, EA-6's, C-2's and E-2's. The situation was such that during OIF the F-14 did the lions share of strike missions, the F-18 at the time couldn't stay on station long enough to be useful. So we found out the hard way that the most useful strike aircraft on the ship also had no spares but had to stay "UP" no matter what. So, what are you going to do? Tell a Marine platoon in Fallujah that is about to be overrun that no help is on the way because of a loose button?

To be more accurate, you are all correct. We didn't use "scotch" tape.... It was Kapton tm. Seriously though, these are modeled somewhat on planes that served in OIF. The things you might do to a plane to get it ready for flight when they are needed to save lives is a bit different than the luxury's you might have during peace time.

Those switches had quite a few parts to them all sandwiched together. The front bezel held it all in when you installed it in the panel. You were supposed to use a specific tool to grab under the bezel and extract the whole switch but lots of years of techs using the wrong tool (small screwdriver) and normal wear caused them to become loose. During the cat shot the buttons would pop out and in the worst cases come out entirely and fall onto the floor. You can a imagine a strapped in pilot has to do some major contortions to try and pick it up again (or sometimes they would invert the plane and try to get it off the canopy). Also, during OIF you really didn't want to down a whole plane for just a switch.... Safety wire or Kapton tape did the trick.