damn, well done... a friend of mine was ground crew for F111's through Desert Storm
Posted on 01/22/2013 5:26:12 AM PST by Doogle
f you're into special airplanes even a little, here is a video I'm sure you'll enjoy. These guys do a remarkable job getting their aircraft back on the ground with a minimal amount of damage. It could have very easily gone the other way. Also, notice early in the video there is a sequence showing a F-111 dumping fuel with the afterburners on lighting up the night sky. Something a little unique to the F-111. The Australians flew the F-111 a lot longer than our Air Force. The airplane was originally designed to land on a carrier deck so the gear structure is very strong. Even landing on a long runway you just maintain 10 degrees angle of attack until the runway stops your descent. Because this is the way the airplane was designed to be landed it felt just fine inside the airplane, but for an observer outside the aircraft it looked like you forgot to flare and really clobbered the landing. I don't know if metal fatigue was a factor in this accident but they are fortunate the wheel fell off upon liftoff and not while accelerating down the runway in full afterburner.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.googleapis.com ...
Spot on.
damn, well done... a friend of mine was ground crew for F111's through Desert Storm
I bet they had to change their underware after that landing!!
Interesting how the guy giving the narration talks metric crap (hard to relate to), while the pilot is talking about how many feet off the runway he needs to be for the hook to catch.
Canadians are the same way.
So was the aircraft scrapped or rebuilt and re-flown?
Who forgot the cotter pin anyways?
Great video ‘D’, thanks......Though the F-111 was designed for Naval service It seems to me that it never saw carrier duty. [maybe because of that 10` landing profile would make it very hard to keep the deck in sight] although two of them went to the Med. on a carrier once...
After they built it they realized the tail hook wasn’t any good for its weight. Whenever the tail hook was used it would tear up the belly fairing. Also, it was totally mechanical. Once it was down, you had to physically reinstall it.
Since the USAF doesn’t require a tail hook, except in an emergency, they went with the F-111. They Navy went with the F-14.
ever know an F111 mech name of John Mushak(sp) while in Saudi?
Sounds familiar. It was a long time ago. If he was with the EF’s they were out of Mt Home. I deployed from RAF Lakenheath. I was with 495th, but deployed with the initial cadre of 18 aircraft.
I forgot to mention that the F-111 was an attempt to build a weapons platform for multi service use. The thought process was it would be cheaper if both the AF and Navy could use the same aircraft. It never works.
yup, the F4 was the last time that'll ever happen...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.