CHAPTER 4
AIRCREW PERSONAL PROTECTIVE
EQUIPMENT
Learning Objective: Upon completion of this chapter, you will be able to
recognize, inspect, and maintain aircrew personal protective equipment.
Aircrew flight clothing plays an essential role
in the safety and survival of Navy aircrewmen.
It protects them from the elements and provides
necessary comfort for efficient mission per-
formance. Its primary function is to protect them
against hazards such as fire, heat, cold, and
immersion in water. Different combinations of
protective clothing and equipment are used for
various flight, emergency, and environmental
conditions.
Naval aircrew protective equipment has also
been designed to provide camouflage and other
escape and evasion design features. Because of the
wide range of environmental conditions in which
aircraft must operate, a compromise between
comfort and protection has, in some cases, been
necessary. Postcrash fire and emergency cold
water exposure are two critical areas where
operational requirements are more important than
flight comfort. Emphasis has been placed on
developing materials and clothing assemblies that
improve survival chances and, specifically,
minimize injuries and prevent loss of life in case
of an aircraft accident in either normal or hostile
environments.
As an Aircrew Survival Equipmentman, some
of your responsibilities are the care and main-
tenance of protective equipment. You may be
required to order, inspect, modify, and repair this
equipment.
facilities, trained personnel and operational needs
are the basic considerations in determining the
level to be used.
Maintenance is divided into two categories
preventive and corrective. Preventive maintenance
is the care and servicing needed to maintain
equipment and facilities in satisfactory operating
condition by providing for systematic inspection,
detection, and correction of failures either before
they occur or before they develop into major
defects. Corrective maintenance is performed as
a result of failure of the part/equipment, or to
correct defects discovered during preventive
maintenance.
Upon completion of any maintenance action
(for example, inspections, repairs, modifications),
you must make appropriate entries on the
applicable maintenance documents. By properly
maintaining these documents, you provide a
complete maintenance history of the equipment
throughout its service life.
The maintenance/material control officer,
using the guidelines of OPNAV 4790.2 (series),
schedules the preventive maintenance of all
aircrew personal protection equipment for which
he is responsible. Maintenance of this equipment
must be thorough at all times. No careless
treatment or willful neglect of aircrew personal
protective equipment will go unnoted. The vital
function of the equipment must be uppermost in
the minds of all personnel concerned.
MAINTENANCE SCHEDULING
AND RECORDS
MAINTENANCE DOCUMENTS
Planned maintenance of protective flight
clothing is performed at the level of maintenance
set forth in OPNAVINST 4790.2 (series). The
levels of maintenance are either organizational,
intermediate, or depot. Mission, time, equipment,
Maintenance documents provide a systematic
means of recording equipment history and
documenting all maintenance actions performed
on the equipment.
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