Pelican damages F-111 mid-flight

news.com.au ^ | April 19, 2008 | ames O'Loan and Alex Dickinson

[mad_as_he$$]

They were introduced late in the war but as I recall withdrawn due to several crashes. They were suppose to be the fix all aircraft for every branch of the service. Turned out carrier performance sucked and the terrain following radar needed some work. Ultimately wound up being a good medium bomber and jamming aircraft. The jammers are called Ravens and I think the US has retired them.

[Patton@Bastogne]

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Thanks for your service ...

Excellent tagline ...

"May God and His Angels Guard Your Sacred Throne, and may You Long Become It ..."


Patton-at-Bastogne


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[mad_as_he$$]

At 600mph they probably never saw it. Especially if it was ascending and they were descending.

[mad_as_he$$]

The Aussie have a ray gun on the Aardvark? :-)

[mad_as_he$$]

B-1A had it too but there were only two (I think) built. It was cut as too expensive for the 4 man crew. I was on one once at Rockwell.

[Oztrich Boy]

The Aussie have a ray gun on the Aardvark? :-)

Actually yes. It's called Pave Tack and uses a laser to designate targets. Although it's mounted in the bomb-bay not the nose

But you probably knew all that :)

[A.A. Cunningham]

Three of the four B-1As were equipped with a crew escape module.

[mad_as_he$$]

Thanks I was trying to pry that out of the sludge in the bottom of the old brain pan.

[Yo-Yo]

Somewhere at Davis-Monthan a telephone is ringing...

"Hello? Yes? F-111 Radomes? Sure, we've got about a hundred of them. How many do you need?"

[BwanaNdege]

We had A-4’s giving us close air support out in Arizona Territory, NW of An Hoa. He was so close that if I had known the pilot, I would have recognized him. Grunts LOVE that kind of “attention to detail”!

We also had a Phantom drop 6 Snake-eyes and 2 cannisters of Napalm from an altitude of about 75 feet. He was about 75 meters BEHIND us, aiming for an NVA mortar in front of our lines. Scary!

[patton]

I am laughing soo hard I am crying...

[patton]

LOL - what is that, a turkey?

LOLOLOL

[tet68]

Glad you made it back, thanks for your service.

[BwanaNdege]

Yeah, we got a real good laugh about it too, in the ready room.

The neat thing was that the safety magazine, “Approach” was so well written that you had to guard your copy to keep someone from swiping it. The editors & writers were the gourmet chefs of safety education.

On another note, I was flying the CH-53 Sikorsky Sea Stallion at the time. One night flight just after takeoff we heard a loud “BOOM”. We returned to base, landed and did a walk-around, looking for damage.

The other pilot called to me from the nose of the aircraft, “I think I’ve found the problem!”

There, dead center on the avionics hatch at the nose of the helo was plastered a seagull. No damage to the aircraft, but the 130 knot encounter ruined the seagull’s evening. It kinda got our attention, too.

:-)