Belly Landing of F111

[Mike Griffin]

Kinda long but the ending is something else.


http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/KIyYK9oz9Go%26autoplay=1%26showinfo=0

[Douglas Ames]

Cute First Officer.

[Brett Buck]

Cute First Officer.

    My thoughts exactly.

     Brett

[Dan McEntee]

    I just have to ask, how thorough was their walk around and preflight inspection, and did a certain maintenance crew have a large portion of the butt chewed away after the event! The pilot did do a nice job. might have been low time in the aircraft type but looks like he's a pretty good stick. I had a talk with a chap from Down Under at one of the better T-Shirt stands at Oshkosh last year. He was a former WSO in F-111's and was looking for T-shirts with them on it. They had just stood down the last of the breed the year before and I don't think there are any more in service now. He really missed the bird and thought they were still viable. But maybe this wheel incident was one of the things that was the beginning of the end for the type.
   And yes, she was a cute WSO, wasn't she! What a recruiting tool!  "Come fly with me, come fly let's fly away!"
   Dan McEntee

[Steve Thomas]

Dan, there's no way any normal walkaround inspection would've picked up the problem here - it's not as if the wheels of an F-111 are held on like a car's. This also had nothing to do with the decision to retire the jet, which had already been made. They were a great machine, but very expensive to maintain and operate.

The wheel came off due to a maintenance error.  The funny part, if there was one, was that having parted company with the jet, the wheel continued on its way at 170 mph and gently veered away from the runway and towards a large maintenance facility - where it destroyed a car belonging to the CO of the unit which had just been working on it! A pretty lucky outcome, really, as these wheels are very big and very heavy.

[Hoss Cain]

Kinda long but the ending is something else.


http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/KIyYK9oz9Go%26autoplay=1%26showinfo=0

The airplane was really a nice airplane to fly. Problems were (1) If you had armament you could not sweep the wings, thus (2) it was almost required to have a Tanker flying along for frequent refueling.  Thus it was nicknamed the "Switch Blade Edsel." Switch Blade due that it was an early swing wing design and the design was intended to be the ONE fighter for both Navy and USAF. "Edsel" was because McNamara (SP???) was the political project person. He also designed the Edsel while at Ford, the Edsel being a total clunker.  I never forget rolling LMAO when I saw on the Bulletin Board that USAF Personnel would no longer refer to the F-111 as the Switch Blade Edsel by order of the Commander USAF. Of course it certainly was CALLED SUCH THEREAFTER. 

[Dallas Hanna]

Some stills of it!   

HH

[Steve Thomas]

The airplane was really a nice airplane to fly. Problems were (1) If you had armament you could not sweep the wings, thus (2) it was almost required to have a Tanker flying along for frequent refueling. 

Sorry Hoss, I don't know who told you that, but it's completely wrong (and doesn't make a lot if sense, f you think about it). The jet had 8 wing stations (ie 4 on each wing); the inner four pivoted as the wings swept, and could carry whatever you want.  If you had weapons with big fins on the two inboard pylons, you might have to limit sweep to 54 degrees rather than the maximum 72, but that was no big deal - with 54 sweep, the jet would likely still go much faster than the carriage limit of the weapon. The outer 4 stations were fixed, and aligned for 26 degrees sweep, which was what you used for long range cruise. The idea was that you'd have weapons on the 4 inboard stations, and if necessary, a couple of drop tanks on the fixed pylons, which you'd punch off before things got exciting. AFAIK we never used the fixed pylons at all in the RAAF - I certainly never flew with them.  That's because the bit about tankers is also quite wrong - in fact the opposite was true. The F-111 had a very large internal fuel capacity (32500 lb, with an empty weight of 50000 lb), and a far greater unrefuelled range than most tactical fighters (but obviously not things like B-52s or B-1s).  That's one of the main reasons why Australia kept them so long. With our geographical situation and a limited AAR capability, the 111 was a very hard aircraft to replace. But yes, it was really nice to fly.

[PerttiMe]

I'd call that landing - and the practice approaches - pretty precise flying.

Why was ejecting ruled out? I believe the F-111 ejects the whole cockpit module, so maybe that is a bit different from using the usual ejection seats.

[Steve Thomas]

I'd call that landing - and the practice approaches - pretty precise flying.

Why was ejecting ruled out? I believe the F-111 ejects the whole cockpit module, so maybe that is a bit different from using the usual ejection seats.

I was long gone by the time this happened, but I'd expect they considered the ejection option and decided it was unnecessary. A lot of aircraft can be landed wheels-up without catastrophic results, and the 111 was a fairly sturdy beast. There had been previous cases where they'd been landed with main gear down and no nose gear, and vice versa, without major problems.

[EddyR]

I was surprised how quick it stopped ,very short landing.
Ed

[Randy Ryan]

I was surprised how quick it stopped ,very short landing.
Ed

If you watch closely you note that it was an "arrested" landing, that is, they used the arresting hook and emergency barrier to quickly stop the aircraft. That pilot did a tremendous job!!! Landing nose down instead of flared as in a normal landing must have felt like he was dragging his butt on the runway to him, freaky! Watch it again and you'll see the hook engage the barrier and the aircraft pulled down to the runway the last few feet. Amazing bit of emergency flying technique there.

[RC Storick]

Amazing bit of emergency flying technique there.

Fly NAVY! Nothing a NAVY pilot doesn't do on every trap. Landing on a carrier is considered a controlled crash. If you ever been there sounds like it too.

[Randy Ryan]

Fly NAVY! Nothing a NAVY pilot doesn't do on every trap. Landing on a carrier is considered a controlled crash. If you ever been there sounds like it too.

Agreed Robert, but even Navy carrier landings are done via slow, full flaps approach, flared and throttled back, this was a "hot" landing, no gear, looks like partial flaps, arrested. The runway wasn't pitching and heaving, but flying that low that fast knowing you're about to be slapped down onto the runway can't be a good feeling no matter who you are and I'll bet the Hookers would agree with me.

[Phil Bare]

MY only question is: Why not use the grass/dirt beside the pavement?

[john e. holliday]

I remember years ago when we still had an air force base,  the Blue Angels went up for their show routine.  One plane kept falling back during the fly bys.   Then watched him pull out and down.  He was headed for the runway away from crowd.   He came in with hook and gear down for an arrested landing.   It is fun watching the different approaches between our branches of flying services.

Have went back and watched the video and did not see the gear come down at any time.  When did he lose the wheel?

[Hoss Cain]

Sorry Hoss, I don't know who told you that, but it's completely wrong (and doesn't make a lot if sense, f you think about it).
XXXXX

Well I suppose people do tell it wrong. My information came from all kinds of sources however two sources were adequate to make me believe them.
Source #1. Just before I left the USAF, I was at another base and ran into an old Aviation Cadet buddy. He was a project officer in the F-111 program. He was not fond of the machine and really unloaded just how worthless it was going to be. That was well before the airplane was in production status.
Source #2 was an ex F-111 driver for something, IIRC, 5+ years. He just happened to be my co-pilot for a couple months along the way when we both had the same line of flying, at UAL. He was most interesting and we had good times concerning the machine. Incidentally he flew the Kadafy (SP?) Raid. He told me that with the ordanance he had to do 11 refuelings between England and the target area but only 2 in the return trip.
I rather think he was well up on the program.
I well remember that in the B-47, having external tanks provided a range of about the same range as NOT having them. The External tanks were only good if you used internal fuel to a point, then filled up from a tanker, then used out of the external tanks until empty and then dropped them. I made the trip from Hunter AFB, Savannah GA, to Spain and Morocco a number of times, once without external tanks, and one refueling each time. Almost no difference in the landing fuel.

[Randy Ryan]

MY only question is: Why not use the grass/dirt beside the pavement?

In an instance like this, stopping the aircraft as rapidly as possible is of first importance. I don't know what his approach speed was, but my guess is if he'd set it on the grass he'd have slid into the next county uncontrolled. Better to arrest under total control the to chance the potential damages and injuries that could result otherwise.

[Bob Kruger]

Sorry Hoss, I don't know who told you that, but it's completely wrong (and doesn't make a lot if sense, f you think about it). The jet had 8 wing stations (ie 4 on each wing); the inner four pivoted as the wings swept, and could carry whatever you want.  If you had weapons with big fins on the two inboard pylons, you might have to limit sweep to 54 degrees rather than the maximum 72, but that was no big deal - with 54 sweep, the jet would likely still go much faster than the carriage limit of the weapon. The outer 4 stations were fixed, and aligned for 26 degrees sweep, which was what you used for long range cruise. The idea was that you'd have weapons on the 4 inboard stations, and if necessary, a couple of drop tanks on the fixed pylons, which you'd punch off before things got exciting. AFAIK we never used the fixed pylons at all in the RAAF - I certainly never flew with them.  That's because the bit about tankers is also quite wrong - in fact the opposite was true. The F-111 had a very large internal fuel capacity (32500 lb, with an empty weight of 50000 lb), and a far greater unrefuelled range than most tactical fighters (but obviously not things like B-52s or B-1s).  That's one of the main reasons why Australia kept them so long. With our geographical situation and a limited AAR capability, the 111 was a very hard aircraft to replace. But yes, it was really nice to fly.

Range and ordnance capacity were the reason we used them to give Khadaffi a little slap in 1986.  6400 miles from the UK and back.  One F-111 lost to a SAM.  Forced him to go back to what he was best at, hijacking airliners or blowing them up.  Notice he never ventured back into the Gulf of Sidra again.

Great aircraft. 

V/r

Bob

[Steve Thomas]

I did some flying with a USAF exchange WSO, who was the gentleman responsible for the attached photos. A very interesting fellow to talk to. The mission was about 14 hours and 6 lots of AAR, thanks to a lack of cooperation from Spain and France  .  It's not as if they could get up and stretch their legs, and they had to be helped from the cockpits after landing. Ralph was pretty cranky that Gaddafi survived, and understood that he'd been tipped off to the raid by the Soviets (it later turned out that a senior Italian politician was the culprit).

An interesting footnote was that the US copped quite a lot of criticism for killing Gaddafi's infant daughter; when he was overthrown, it turned out that she'd made a miraculous recovery from being dead, and is now qualified as a doctor.

[Clancy Arnold]

Doc
Per Steve Thomas it came off at liftoff.

The wheel came off due to a maintenance error.  The funny part, if there was one, was that having parted company with the jet, the wheel continued on its way at 170 mph and gently veered away from the runway and towards a large maintenance facility - where it destroyed a car belonging to the CO of the unit which had just been working on it! A pretty lucky outcome, really, as these wheels are very big and very heavy.
Clancy

[Brian Hampton]

The video is from RAAF Base Amberley in Queensland where Steve used to fly the F111 and I spent 8 years working on them as an aircraft engine fitter. We never met though because I left the air force long before Steve got there yet here we both are on an American forum devoted to CL stunt. It's a small world .

The nearest I've seen to that video while working there was the day an F111 came in to land but, as was found out shortly after, somehow the pilot had pulled the park brake on. Both mains exploded as soon as it touched down and it took 2 years to repair the damage.

[Douglas Ames]

Operation "Eldorado Canyon" was the raid on Libya in 1986. I was stationed at RAF Fairford, UK during that time with the European Tanker Task Force. Basically all our KC-135's were TDY from the states and we were assigned along with the Crew Chiefs for maintenance support. We launched part of the Tanker force for that raid along with other bases. Later I was assigned to Plattsburgh AFB, NY as a Crew Chief (KC-135) which had F-111's with nukes and KC-135A/Q's on SAC alert. I'm guessing that's where the Aussies got them. Not exactly hand-me-downs as they were well maintained. I miss Ronnie, he was a good CIC.

[PerttiMe]

Was the F-111 capable of zero speed - zero altitude ejection?

[Brett Buck]

Was the F-111 capable of zero speed - zero altitude ejection?

   No ejection, it was an escape capsule that took off the front of the airplane. I would be surprised if it was zero-zero but have no idea about the details.

    Brett

[Andrew Borgogna]

I have a story about the F111 that dates back to 1967 when it saw its very first combat missions over Vietnam.  A flight of four came to Thailand and visited all the bases so we could all take a look at them.  Then they went to their home base, either Ubon or Udorn not sure, then they started combat missions.  We lost three of the four planes before the Air Force finally figured out what the problem was.  It seems the terrain following radar that maintained altitude was tested over desert environment, not over jungles with 100' tree canopes.  They were actually flying into the trees and going down.  We were lucky that the last one to go in crashed in Thailand so the Air Force could recover the data recorder and finally determine why they were crashing.  At least that's the story that went around Thailand at the time.

As was mentioned the F111 was designed for both the Air Force and the Navy, which might explain why the plane stayed together on the belly landing.  I saw videos of the carrier test landings that the F111 when through and that is one strong plane.  The Nave rejected it because it did not meet their requirements.  The Air Force rejected it as an air superiority platform, but found out it made one hell of a tactical fighter bomber. 
Andy

[Steve Thomas]

Hi Andy, I can add a bit to that. There was a lot of rumour apparently going around about the reason for the early losses.  The TFR would fly on autopilot down to 200'; we never saw a problem with trees & jungle, but you had to be careful with snow, as it isn't radar-reflective. Anyway, one of the stories going round was that at least one of the pilots in that first deployment reckoned he could hand-fly the jet below 200', using the E-scope which was part of the system.  That might be theoretically possible, but I certainly wouldn't want to hand-fly a jet at 100' at near Mach 1, over mountainous terrain on a dark and stormy night, without being able to see where I was going! Anyway, that was only a rumour that I heard about 20 years afterwards. The official line that eventually came out was that the horizontal tails were failing due to faulty work by a subcontractor. Once they ironed out the problems, the jet ended up with the lowest loss rate of any tactical fighter in SE Asia.

Quote from: PerttiMe on February 15, 2013, 06:30:38 AM
Was the F-111 capable of zero speed - zero altitude ejection?

   No ejection, it was an escape capsule that took off the front of the airplane. I would be surprised if it was zero-zero but have no idea about the details.

    Brett

It was theoretically zero-zero, but they recommended a minimum of 50 kts. The capsule had its pros and cons.  It was nice knowing that you could eject supersonic at low altitude without any of the nasty windblast injuries you'd expect with a conventional seat. Also, if you went down over the water, you were in your own ready-made boat.  The control column even converted into a bilge pump and flotation-bag-inflater (is it any wonder the thing was way late and over budget? ). On the other hand, there was the landing.  The training film for the capsule said that it would "alight gently", or words to that effect, but the reality was more like jumping off a double-decker bus while sitting on a chair.   . Still, better than the alternative.

Later I was assigned to Plattsburgh AFB, NY as a Crew Chief (KC-135) which had F-111's with nukes and KC-135A/Q's on SAC alert. I'm guessing that's where the Aussies got them.

Australia actually ordered them off the drawing board in 1963, a year before the prototype flew, but only took delivery in 1973 due to all the development problems the jet had. (The RAAF operated leased F-4Es while it was waiting.) We then got another 37 years use out of them, with various avionics upgrades and re-engining, so I'd say we got our money's worth.

[Randy Ryan]

   No ejection, it was an escape capsule that took off the front of the airplane. I would be surprised if it was zero-zero but have no idea about the details.

    Brett

I don't believe it was 0-0, there was a fusable strip around the edge of the cockpit that cit the skin and a guiotine divice that severed wires and lines an the like and a light charge to separate the pod from the airframe. The chute was located at the rear of the pod and I believe it descended in a somewhat nose down attitude. Been a long time though since I was involve and I only recieve fam training on the 111

[Andrew Borgogna]

The term we used back then was "Zero Lanyard" for ground level ejection.  Don't know what it's called today.  The F105 was equipped with zero lanyard, but it could be problematic under certain conditions.  We lost a pilot on take off one day, as the plane rolled down the runway it blew a tire.  The plane listed over as the tire came apart and the wheel hub was destroyed.  At that point the pilot punched out.  Because the plane was listing at an angle the ejections was at an angle and he never achieved enough altitude for the barometric sensor to deploy the chute.  Sad part was he didn't die from the fall, he landed upside down in a klong (Thai for canal) and drowned.  That was a sad day in Korat.
Andy

[Brian Hampton]

I don't believe it was 0-0, there was a fusable strip around the edge of the cockpit that cit the skin and a guiotine divice that severed wires and lines an the like and a light charge to separate the pod from the airframe.

The "light charge" was a pair of rocket motors, the nozzle of one could be seen inside the nose wheel bay and the other was at the back of the module.

Many long years ago a few days after I arrived at our Woomera rocket range I went for a ride in a Canberra bomber that had been modified with 0-0 ejection seats because it was set up as a radio controlled target plane. The ground controllers obviously needed to practise flying them by radio so a pilot had to be there as a "just in case". Being new there I had no idea of the setup so for a while I didn't know why everyone was calling me a "guts merchant" for volunteering to go for a ride. I soon found out when I looked up front to the pilot and saw him casually sitting there with his arms folded and the plane apparently doing its own thing .

[Bill Adair]

Interesting information indeed.

I had a personal grudge against the FB111 program (more specifically against R. S. McNamara), but no direct involvement with the aircraft. The story goes that R.S.M. had a lot of family money invested in the General Dynamics company, and cancelled our program (Skybolt ALBM Tech School) to fund the TFX instead. I and many of my friends had been trained as AF Tech Instructors (Inertial Guidance in my case), on the state of the art Skybolt system, and were in the process of finalizing the Tech School program for AF personnel, when it was cancelled. The future assignments many of us missed out on because of that cancellation, were a great disappointment. In my case a year or two at Lowry AFB as an instructor in the Skybolt school, and then an FTD instructor assignment in Spain thereafter. Never did make it back to that part of the world.

Years later, I was involved in Integration testing of an avionics system using the TFR electronics from the FB111. We were having problems getting consistant test results, so I was asked to TS the avionics. We opened the main TFR unit in the process of trouble shooting, and when I saw some of the circuits inside, I called the test manager to come have a look. The circuit board inside used what we called cord wood construction, in that resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors, and other parts were mounted standing on end. I hadn't seen construction like that since the cheap transistor radios hit the country many many years before! The whole mess was then potted with what looked like wax, to keep the components from vibrating enough to break the solder connections. My boss just shook his head, and said button it up, so we can return it to vendor.

Steve, I can't believe flight crews trusted their lives to that unit in flight, as I've been told the stresses and vibration levels under TFR conditions can be pretty severe.

Again, fast forward a few years when one of our manufacturing supervisors invited me for a look at the FB111 Adaptive wind test airplane. Shades of the Terminator animations! That wing had more actuators, and pivot points per square inch than Arnold's injured arm!

Wasn't there another suspected problem with the Elevon systems? An article I read said the AF specified an extrusion for a part (yoke?), instead of the casting proposed by the manufacturer. It was said that many of the cast parts were simply machine finished to resemble extrusions by the vendor, and were an early source of failures.

Bill

[Steve Thomas]

Steve, I can't believe flight crews trusted their lives to that unit in flight, as I've been told the stresses and vibration levels under TFR conditions can be pretty severe.

Hi Bill, what you have to realise is that we were incredibly brave and skilful, not to mention modest.  More seriously, we always started from the assumption that the TFR would try to kill us on a moment's notice, and worked from there. Funnily enough, it never did.  I don't think it ever frightened me in over 1200 hours.

The stresses and vibration levels weren't much of a problem, as the jet gave a very smooth ride - partly because of the swing wing and flight control system (which was a really impressive effort for its time), and partly because the wing loading was up in F-104 territory.

I think McNamara had a lot to answer for, not just for the TFX program, but for the whole way the Vietnam war was managed. But that's a whole other story of course.

Steve