617Dambusters

LOL the f-4 may have been fast but as was said had the glide path of a brick. I got to ride in an f-4 for being a good boy LOL. Also saw one crash in ft. worth the pilots head wounded up in his chest was not pretty!!

I was a rescue swimmer in the Navy, (an AW2 for us squids), and saw quite a few accidents and crashes.

The most vivid, is when I saw an F-14's engines burn-out in mid-air, while accelerating past Mach1. The whole back of the plane went "poof", a brief fireball, then black smoke. Both crew ejected safely, thank god. The F-14 is a great old bird, which will be sorely missed, but even in '88, they we're getting long in the tooth.

I think the worst memory was fishing dead bodies out of the Bay of Bengal, after an Indian airliner went down on it's way to Singapore. YUCK.

S!

There's something about those old heavy hunks of iron with the big engines like the F-4 and the F-14 that makes them classics.
Like the old muscle cars of the 1970's.
Performance wise, they can't compete with the modern stuff, but man, what a ride.

I envy you Ben, going up in an F-4. Must have been great fun!

In Australia, the RAAF briefly had a squadron or two of F-4s while we were waiting on delivery of the F-111. We had to make sure we still had supersonic bomber capability to keep the aircrews up to speed when the 111s got delayed.
We're probably going to have the same problem with the JSF F-35. Looks like it'll be delayed too. We have plans to completely overhaul and upgrade the centre barrells of our F-18s to keep them in the air in the meantime (an expensive option), but there's also talk of getting an interim replacement as well, until the F-35 comes on-line.
We have a habit of buying into unproven technology, and then acting surprised when there are delays and budget blowouts...

You guys will probably call me crazy, but the best penetrator that we had in the Air Force, prior to stealth technology, the swig wing F-111 was that beast. After Jimmy Carter scrapped the B1, the new avionics that were destined for the B1 Bomber, was placed in the F-111's.

The way I understand it from the SOF (Supervisor of Flying), a pilot from the command squadron in the Control Tower explained it was, you pop in the tape, load your mission profile, and you basically had nothing else left to do but land. They are a sight to see low level, wings back, man are they fast at 200 feet off the deck. They carried terrain following radar so all you do is set the distance you wanted to stay above the obsticles and off ya go.

We affectinately call the F-111, "The Ardvark". Side by Side cockpit setup. When the pilots open er up to climb out, those two glass canopy's,
in the open position make her look like a dragon fly....big ole bug eyes.

Anyone remember when the Air Force had to ground the entire fleet? It was during Vietnam. Terrain following radar was new. Letting Autopilot fly you at huge speed, 100 feet or so off the ground. The cause wound up being pilot intervention. They would disengage it when things got tight and before he could manually input the upward movement of the plane, spat. They didn't trust their electronics.

The B1 Avionics Package makes this nasty little girl, ready to snarl out the bad guys, for quite some time. And she's already old.

Yeah those F-111s are a sight to see. We still have them in RAAF inventory, we call them the Pig, instead of Aardvark.
With that avionics upgrade, they are a formable aircraft. Even now in excercises, their capability is unmatched by any other aircraft, to this day.
We are the only airforce in the world who still use them, it's a shame, as they are a great aircraft. The problem is they are VERY expensive to maintain, as they are so old now. The F-35 is set to replace them in 2012 or so, but they may not last that long.

Another unusual feature of the F-111 is the crew ejection procedure. The whole cockpit section seperates with explosive bolts from the nose of the aircraft, and the crew come down in a "pod". Once that pod seperates, there is no way it can be refitted onto the aircraft.

I'm not sure if Australia used them in Vietnam, if we didn't, I don't know why. I know we did use Canberras there.

Hey Harshat, about halfway along these clips, there's an F-14 which seems to explode after going supersonic... Viewed from the John Paul Jones....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxRNesMAMIs&mode=related&search=

There is some pretty amazing footage here. I was happy to see at least a few guys punch out, but, it made me feel kind of sick to think how many didn't in these clips...

Yeah mate, unfortunately this wasn't an unheard of occurance. I think they lost one or two a year this way. It got so bad, that the Navy suspended supersonic flight in the F-14's for a while! We were all told that it was an issue on the first-generation engines used in the F-14A's, and under certain circumstances, they were prone to flame-outs and such. The flame-out/crash I saw was almost the same, but less dramatic, with less flame and more smoke.

If my memory serves me correct, the first engines were F100-P100 Pratt & Whitney engines. The same engine was used in the F-16's at the beginning as well but only a single one of course. The F-15's were later fitted with the F100-P200 engines (upgrade). But like I said, if memory serves me correct.

I'm not sure if the F-14 shared engines with the F-16, but I seem to recall some F-16's from MacDill AFB dropping into Tampa Bay (I live in St. Petersburg, FL), with some regularity too!