I laugh because those guys are so happy and taking pictures with the crashed F-111, which reminds me of a particular story... A set of stories... I went to the 35th Reunion of my dad's induction into the Air Force Academy. Later me and my dad about four of his closer friends went to a restaurant to hang out. Eventually the talk turned into talking about one of the pilots call-sign "Buck" crashing his F-4 Phantom over Alaska. I know this story will seem long winded but I feel like I can't cut to the punch line and must tell their entire story.
#1 and #2
Buck was was flying in formation heading back to base in a four ship he was number three. By the way this is at night. He looks down at his fuel indicator and says that he has a little less fuel then he thought and it must be because he had used more burner than he thought. Later he looks down and notices he has even less fuel and thinks there may be a problem he reports this to the flight leader. Then the number four slot says... "Hey Buck, you have a con(contrail)". He was the only one with a contrail... He realizes that he is leaking fuel. His fuel is getting so low he realizes that he wont make it and begins making preparation for ejecting and arranging a SAR bird to come and get him. He decides the best course of action is to try to get as far as he can then glide down to about 10,000 feet and eject while he is slow to minimize any damage to himself and his backseater.
The rest of the fourship stays with him the whole time to make sure he ejects safely and to better mark the area he goes down in for the SAR chopper. He spotted a large clearing and decided to aim for that for when he ejected. His backseater went first then he pulled the shroud down and triggered the ejection sequence. Something was wrong! His motor didn't work! Then his whole instrument panel turned bright white and he was blinded. He felt the canopy blow off and he was accelerated upward away from the aircraft. His seat actually worked flawlessly he didn't realize at first but his sense of time had slowed down dramatically and he said he could see every single step in the ejection sequence work individually.
As he descended towards the clearing something was wrong. It wasn't a clearing. It was in fact a small lake or pond and who knew how thick the ice was on top? His only choice was to aim towards the trees. He landed on a 60ft or so pine tree and broke through the upper layers until finally falling about 20 feet at the ends but lands in snow and is relatively okay except one of his ankles may be sprained and cuts and bruises from the branches. Buck radios up and finds out the Chopper is about 10 minutes out. His training kicks in and he begins building his snow shelter as he doesn't know if they will be able to find him that night or not. Buck also had an F-15C eat its engine and go beyond repair because of the damage I don't remember the details becuase of that.
#3
Another of my dad's friends follows up with his story of wrecking a plane. This guy was doing touch and goes with his KC-135 somewhere in California he is doing these at night. On his second or third run it is going as normal when he sees something on the side of the runway. A cow? Suddenly, Thump! a huge bull hits the nose wheel completely taking it out and this KC-135 is sliding down the runway. It gets worse. Another cow hits the left gear and takes it out so the tanker is sliding on one wheel which is highly dangerous becuase it could easily groundloop or flip over. Him and his co-pilot or slamming on the right brake and hard as they can to make sure they don't flip as they are quickly losing hydraulic fluid. The plane comes to a rest and my dad's friends and the co-pilot are nervously laughing about the situation and unhooking themselves when the Boom operator comes running up yelling "WE ARE upliftING ON FIRE!!". Their pace quickens as this thing could blow at any second. The crew is jumping out of the cockpit windows the last guy out is in the air when it goes straight up fireball and singes him as he comes down they are running away from this huge explosion and fire is raging behind them.
#4
The last guys story I don't really remember but he crashed his F-15 becuase of a nose gear failure I think I am not really sure.
ANYWHOO! To get back to how this is related to the F-111 crew taking a picture of themselves with the wreck. "Buck", by the way his last name was Rogers hence the callsign, who crashed the F-4 and had his F-15 become damaged beyond repair. Starts laughing and says, "Not Bad for three guys out of the five here. Someone just needs to crash one more and we will have one for each. We took out four Air Force planes and all from the 19th (AFA squadron)". They all high-five and clink their glasses together.
