Taz, This one is for you (F-111 Videos)...

Thanks, pretty much all true. I flew them for nearly 18 years, including Desert Storm, and was a Weapons School graduate. Fernando Ribas was in the 522 TFS at Cannon AFB with me when we were both lieutenants, and Paul Lawrence was supposed to be my replacement at the 431st Test and Evaluation Squadron at McClellan. I probably dropped/guided around 200 PGMs during testing and Desert Storm, including AGM-65D Mavericks, GBU-10/12/24 LGBs, and the GBU-15 data link glide weapon. The F-111F was way faster than the other models, but the fastest I have been was in an F-111D at Mach 2.55 on a functional check flight. We got the total temp warning on that one, which says slow down within 300 seconds or the airframe will start melting.

 

Rob- I flew F-111Fs out of Taif, Saudi Arabia. The F-111Es were actually out of Incirlik, Turkey. So they were drinking beer after flying, which we could not.

Do not know them. There was a digital F-111 track with F-111Ds at Cannon AFB and F-111Fs at RAF Lakenheath, and an analog track with F-111As at Mountain Home AFB and F-111Es at RAF Upper Heyford. There was some cross-pollination, but usually the digital and analog guys stayed in their own track.

The F-111Es these guys flew could not drop PGMs. Our F-111Fs dropped about 85% of all the LGBs used in Desert Storm. You killed a whole lot more with PGMs.

 

This will be available from Amazon in April, but supposedly it is already available from other sources:

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I have several references on Eldorado Canyon, but not that one. Jim Rotramel and I flew together at RAF Lakenheath and I even took some aerial videos for him while we were flying. Legal in USAFE, but would have gotten you court martialed in TAC/ACC.

Attack was complicated by French refusal for overflight. Flew in international airspace through the Straits of Gibraltar, which resulted in a very long mission with multiple aerial refuelings. Very few of the F-111F crews were PGM and Pave Tack qualified, so that limited ordnance options. Gaddafi was actually in a tent in a courtyard when the Mk84 warheads of the GBU-10s exploded in the building near the courtyard. 4000 lbs of ordnance, including 1960 lbs of tritonal, scared him so badly he never again allowed any more Libyan-fronted terrorist attacks on US assets

 

Mostly fiction. I was an FCF WSO at Cannon AFB. On an FCF in an F-111D in 1977, we hit Mach 2.55 at 49,500' because you could not fly above 50,000' without a pressure suit or partial pressure suit. Loss of cabin pressure would have made your blood boil. I have told this story before, but we got the Total Temp warning that comes on at 153°C and the 300 second clock started winding down. When we brought both engines back to mil power, both left and right engine oil hot lamps illuminated because of the loss of afterburner oil cooling. That calls for an engine shut down, but obviously we were not going to shut down both engines. The lamps went out so we landed uneventfully.

The F-111D had about 20,000 lbst per engine, but the F-111F had about 25,000 lbst per engine, so accelerated quite a bit quicker. Early in its life at Mountain Home AFB before they moved to RAF Lakenheath, FCF crews would occasionally see Mach 2.6 in the 1970 model series F-111Fs. The later ones were built in small batches with congressional adds and tended to be put together crooked with the jigs dug out of storage, so were not nearly as fast. We had one F-111F at McClellan AFB and the 431st TES that would actually supercruise at around Mach 1.10 at FL 250. Naturally that was F-111F 70-2400 from the good batch.

I was at RAF Lakenheath when the FCF pilot convinced the wing commander to let him take one of the F-111Fs through a full FCF profile. He reached Mach 2+, and all the latest water-based paint did indeed peel off, revealing the Mountain Home markings. That is the origin of that story.

Aluminum framed aircraft have a practical limit of about Mach 2.5 because of aerodynamic heating, regardless of how much power you have. Same for the F-22A, with a much higher thrust to weight ratio than any F-111, even if not as good a heat sink or as streamlined. They can fly at FL 600 because of their partial pressure suits, but aerodynamic heating is still an issue, especially with stealth coatings.

Mach 3.2 in an F-111F? Afraid not. Plus the mach meter stopped at 2.5. We extrapolated the 2.55 because we went past the 2.5 marking. There was a Slow Down lamp that illuminated when the 300 second clock wound down or total temperature reached 214° C. That kind of speed would have melted the airframe. The MiG25/MiG31 have stainless steel leading edges that let them get to Mach 2.8 and the SR-71A had a titanium airframe to reach Mach 3+ airspeeds. Not possible with an all-aluminum airframe.

 

OMG, not the dreaded 'Slow Down Lamp'. If only you had removed the CAT's and gone to test pipes.

 

Fascinating stuff, Taz. Thank you for sharing. Most first-person aviation stories are what I like to call "There I was" stories that focus on the historical event and rarely go into details of the machinery involved. These rarely-discussed little details are what fascinates me about aviation. (From my career experience...) Like the awful JFS/brake accumulator charge pump that you had to pump up every morning on the F-16, or the APP clutch on the MH-53 that you knew might explode at any time while you were starting the APP, or the windshield wipers on the CV-22 that are absolutely GUARANTEED to catch fire if anybody is foolish enough to use them. Airplanes all have personalities that make them special, and that kind of stuff you never really get from the history books.

 

So that's something the F-111 has in common with my Ferrari 328!

 

Yup, one was going to melt and the other was going to catch on fire. We started our run over Alamosa, Colorado and flew south through a supersonic corridor over New Mexico. We were running out of airspace and approaching the Mexican border when we go her slowed down for the return to Cannon AFB.

Amazingly enough, fuel flow at those speeds was way less than doing Mach 1.2 at sea level. About 28,000 lbs/hr per engine at Mach 2+ and over 60,000 lbs/hr for each engine at sea level. Atmosphere was a lot denser down there. Aerodynamic heating was not an issue low level but air loadings (q) were way higher and parts like overwing fairings tended to be ripped off.

 

I quite like the Curious Droid youtube channel, and he just put up a video on the F-111 :

 

Good film of the F-111B. The Navy hated it. Way too big and heavy and relatively underpowered with the original TF-30 engines for a fleet defense role. So, they took the engines and Phoenix fire control system and put them in the smaller and lighter F-14.

USAF F-111Fs dropped about 85% of the PGMs in Desert Storm and had over a 90% mission capable rate. One loss in Desert Shield and none in Desert Storm out of approximately 64 aircraft deployed.