?
How did that work? The Pave Low went away in 2008 but the Marine Ds went away in 2012. Or did the AF have another model?
I‘m assuming it went both ways. There were only 3 D squadrons left in the late 2000’s and I think at least a few of the HMH’s transitioned from D to E in the 80’s, so there must have been plenty for the AF to canny before the Pave Low’s retired.
In 2010 we were cannying the freshly retired Pave Lows, IIRC for tail gear boxes and the like. I think the Pave Low’s had titanium reinforcement added in the tail that there was talk of harvesting before they committed to retiring the D.
I dropped one off at AMARG after EMV in 2011; there were still quite a few complete ones. The deployed birds at Bastion were among the last to go. Each of the Hawaii squadrons just flew their planes to AMARG before their last deployment. There was one D hulk sitting just off the Bastion flight line with irreparable frame corrosion near the piss tube. They finally chopped it up and let folks claim parts of the airframe.
Germany just did a mid-life modernization of their CH-53G’s around 2020, so I imagine the AMARG planes were put to some use.