F-111 loses wheel on takeoff - safe belly landing

[CMC Airboss]

F-111 lands gear-up in Australia after wheel falls off on takeoff.  With video at the link.

A SAFETY audit of Australia's ageing F-111 strike bomber jet fleet has been ordered after a dramatic emergency landing west of Brisbane yesterday.

The accident-prone fleet has been grounded as a precaution after yesterday's three-hour saga sparked when a jet being flown by a junior pilot from the Amberley Air Force base lost one of its wheels on take-off.

The crippled F-111 circled for hours to burn thousands of kilograms of fuel and the pilot performed several low-level fly-overs of the runway before successfully bringing the aircraft to a stop with a dramatic belly landing aided by an aircraft carrier-style arrester cable.

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/story/0,20797,19836941-953,00.html

[Bluedog]

Old they may be, but the role filled by the F-111 cannot be filled by any other aircraft yet designed, at least not as well and efficiently.
When they design something else that can drop a 2k lb lgb through your outhouse window from 50 ft up at the speed of sound in a mountain valley ringed by AAA, and then get out and fly home in time for happy hour at the boozer, no doubt the RAAF will replace 'em, but untill that happens, they are insanely proud of their 'Pigs' , and get rather aggressive when you point out the fact that they are a 1960s aircraft which look more at home in the company of Thunderchiefs, Phantoms and Skyhawks than they do with Hornets and Raptors.

Funny thing is, Amberley air base is only about 50km from here, and the first I had heard of this incident was this thread by  Airboss in the O Club !:)

Local news didnt even give it a "Oh yeah, by the way, the zoomies at Amberley had another brown trousers moment earlier today when one of their ancient Pigs threw a wheel on takeoff"

[Furball]

Originally posted by Bluedog
Old they may be, but the role filled by the F-111 cannot be filled by any other aircraft yet designed, at least not as well and efficiently.
When they design something else that can drop a 2k lb lgb through your outhouse window from 50 ft up at the speed of sound in a mountain valley ringed by AAA

Tornado GR4...

[deSelys]

If I recall correctly, Tornadoes suffered relatively high losses ratio during Gulf War I low level missions. Something to do with the variable swept wing complex mechanism making it less able to sustain damage...

[AquaShrimp]

F-111 has swing wings also.

[DiabloTX]

16 January - 60 RAF GR.1s participate in Operation Granby, the first stage of the liberation of Kuwait. ALARM missile and TIALD pod rushed into service for the war. Several aircraft and their crews were lost, one during a low-level strike missions using the JP233 runway-denial weapon and others with free-fall bombs. These missions were particularly vulnerable to anti-aircraft artillery fire and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. RAF F.3s are among the first aircraft to arrive in theatre and operate Combat Air Patrols within Saudi airspace throughout the conflict.

[eagl]

Neither the tornado or the F-15E quite matches the F-111 in the deep penetration and precision strike role.

The F-15E is close and the Brits are insane so they MAKE the tornado do the same mission with pretty much the same effectiveness, but nothing in service today matches the F-111 in it's intended primary role.

Old F-111 guys can tell you story after story about how they embarassed the hell out of the hotshot F-15 air defense guys anytime the F-111 was tasked to play red air strikers, and how to get "realistic" training, the F-111 crews had to tone it down.

Those century series fighters were damn good because they weren't all designed to be jack-of-all-trades multirole aircraft.  They typically had one mission and did it extremely well.  Not too cost effective nowadays, so we're making up for reduced capabilities in some areas with aggressive sensor and data integration throughout the battlespace.  So far it seems to be working...

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by Furball
Tornado GR4...

Nope.

[SFRT - Frenchy]

Yes.

[SFRT - Frenchy]

and also the toilets equiped version

[AquaShrimp]

I guess you don't have to worry about Stealth capabilities if your plane flies below radar and extremely fast.

Eagl, if an F-111 was flying below ground based radar, would an F-15 be able to spot it on radar?

[Maverick]

I'm curious as to the description of "accident-prone fleet came from. Is he implying the equipment is bad or just the maintenance of it?

Shrimp.

The F15 does not have to rely on ground based radar to sopt aircraft. There are 2 airborn radars it uses. The first is the onboard which gives it the look down shoot down capability. The second would be AWACS style airborn radar which would be far less attenuated by ground clutter tahn a short range ground based system.

[LePaul]

There was a post someplace that said the pilot had *just* transitioned to F-111s 3 weeks ago

[Mini D]

Originally posted by eagl
Those century series fighters were damn good because they weren't all designed to be jack-of-all-trades multirole aircraft.  They typically had one mission and did it extremely well.  Not too cost effective nowadays, so we're making up for reduced capabilities in some areas with aggressive sensor and data integration throughout the battlespace.  So far it seems to be working...

That's a bit ironic eagl. The F-111 was designed to be a "one plane solution" for all branches of the military. It failed miserably and everyone dropped it but the Air Force which used it for the one thing it excelled at: low level high speed bombing.

I do believe that the plane revolutionized alot of tactics in that regard, but it's initial function was not intended to be so narrow.

[GtoRA2]

Originally posted by Mini D
That's a bit ironic eagl. The F-111 was designed to be a "one plane solution" for all branches of the military. It failed miserably and everyone dropped it but the Air Force which used it for the one thing it excelled at: low level high speed bombing.

I do believe that the plane revolutionized alot of tactics in that regard, but it's initial function was not intended to be so narrow.

Yep, the F-14 came from its failure and got stuck with the same crappy engines?