I can imagine the reply to your wheel has fallen off! It’s fuckin what!😂🇦🇺🇦🇺 I remember watching them on the news that night and hearing it on the radio at work as it was happening. Amberley was there home base and Brisbane is only a short drive.
My dad was part of the technical team that decided on the F111. They were offered a flight in one too. But the first guy who went up looked so sick afterwards, everyone else passed.
CKB Civil is an Australian company that installs the BAK14/12 aircraft arresting systems all over our country. We are so proud that these systems work and save our military RAAF pilots lives. We have supported the Royal Australian Airforce since 1999, and continue to do so to this date. We were at RAAF Amberley when this emergency took place. What a fantastic display of flying by our boys!!!!!!! Glad to finally comment on this incident. CB
2023: I was stationed at Cannon AFB New Mexico, TAC in 1973-1974. I was a power lineman and I also maintained the airfield power and lighting. Loved being on the flight line. We were an F-111 training base. Beautiful and Great aircraft. Great piloting, great team and safe landing. Thank You & best Regards
I used to work on them too (Electric shop + some ECS / MA). I heard when they were being assigned to their first US base, they arrived broke from the factory!
As I said before, I witnessed the previous landing of an F-111, an F model, with its main gear door jammed not allowing the maingear to open, they came in with a slightly exaggerated angle-of-attack and their nose gear down to engage the barrier cable. They were exiting the aircraft as it was coming to a stop. Did much less damage to the aircraft than these Australian Pilots. You make an issue out of the younger Pilots. That was the perfect people to do such a thing. I'm more experienced pilot might have tried to do something a little bit different. These guys were young enough to just do what they needed to do.
It's a ripper mini-doc this, and remains so many years later. Definitely brown trousers time for all involved. I remember sitting next to Luke Warner for an EW course back in the late '90's.
The plane was written off. That was an expensive day. After the belly landing the aircraft had never been repaired and its fin and rudder are preserved at RAAF Base Amberley.
Repaired FB-111A's in the 90's. Amazing capabilities and difficult to maintain. At altitude and angles it would outrun a Mig-25... for a bit... parts would fall off over Mach 3.1, but not it's role as "whispering death". These and The Bones were some amazing aircraft.
My grandfather was a major in the airforce and flew this plane through out Korea and Vietnam his plane is now on display is my home town. Miss him very much I wish I could ask him about that cool fuel dump they could ignite
In 92 (I think) the F1-11 from Australia came to RIAT in the UK. Great show, but you realised it took a lot of looking after with the mechanics with tables of tools at its parking spot.
I remember when they were retired 10 years early one of the RAAF pilots said something along the lines of every hour of flight resulted in 100 man hours of maintenance. They spent 40 years tearing around at crazy speeds, they did their job but were just too tired to keep justifying trying to maintain.
When I was at Mountain Home AFB, F-111A's were transferred from Nellis AFB. Some flew directly from NAFB to MHAFB on "circle-red "X"s. And some came to MHAFB on flat-bed trucks. Prior to this the F-111F's went tp Lakenheath AB in England.
There was a 17 yo Maggie in the USA solo pilot who was by herself just starting her solo had her right landing gear falling off on take off. ATC, Instructor pilot helped her down safely. Minor damage to aircraft after her plane shortly after landing dug into the runway and off to the right and she walked away safely! This is a pretty amazing emergency landing and it is great to see it went well!!
I actually made the gyroscope housing on the belly targeting pod for that aircraft. We think it was a prototype because I only made 6 of them. I was a third-year Apprentice at the time but I was very good at Manuel machine work and at CNC Machining centers. I had a little Haas indexer and a kitamura mycenter 1. It took a lot of profiling since we did not have cad-cam back then a lot of math.
