One for the Pilots

Pete McCluskey.

Lifetime Supporter
If you're into special airplanes even a little, here is a video I’m sure you’ll enjoy if you haven't seen it.
These guys do a remarkable job getting their aircraft back on the ground with a minimal amount of damage.

It could have very easily gone the other way. Also, notice early in the video there is a sequence showing a
F-111 dumping fuel with the afterburners on lighting up the night sky.
Something a little unique to the F-111.

The Australians flew the F-111 a lot longer than the US Air Force.
The airplane was originally designed to land on a carrier deck so the gear structure is very strong.
Even landing on a long runway you just maintain 10 degrees angle of attack until the runway stops your descent.
Because this is the way the airplane was designed to be landed it felt just fine inside the airplane, but for an observer
outside the aircraft it looked like you forgot to flare and really clobbered the landing.

I don't know if metal fatigue was a factor in this accident but they are fortunate the wheel fell off upon lift-off and
not while accelerating down the runway in full after-burner.


Using the tail hook to catch the arresting cable was a great idea, as you will see.
Arresting wires on runways are not like the ones on the flight deck of a carrier.
They provide less resistance and let you decelerate over about a 900 ft. range, something you wouldn't have
room to do on a carrier.

https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/KIyYK9oz9Go&autoplay=1&showinfo=0
 

Terry Oxandale

Skinny Man
Great post! I love the F-111, but the B-58 was always my true long-term love. The "Century" fighters seemed to have a distinction of their own that will never be matched again.

So just curious, what is used on a land-based arresting cable to slow/stop the aircraft?
 
Pete, just a minor correction- McNamara (Sec. of Defense under Kenedy & Johnson) wanted an aircraft that could do everything and be used by both Air force and Navy for cost efficiency. Fairly early on in development it became obvious that it was not very good at anything, and the Navy closed ranks and did everything possible to avoid getting saddled with it. They finally were able to show that a fully loaded F-111 would punch holes in the deck of an aircraft carrier on a heavy landing, and didn't have to accept it. There were a lot of AF people who didn't want it either, but a turf war between SAC and TAC over ho got it and the mission sent mixed messages, and since President Johnson wanted General Dynamics (in Ft. Worth, Texas, his home state) to get the contract, we got the plane, and the Navy got the Tomcat.
I don't know the politics in Australia at the time, but you guys found out after you got it that fully loaded with max advertized ordinance and fully fulled, the take-off run exceeded the available runway length of your airfields.
Each time one failed to return from a mission over North Vietnam, they were restricted from flying for a month or so while Stan. Eval. tried to figure out why- pilot error, structural failure, AAA, terrain-following radar, etc. The standing joke at my base at Ubon, Thailand was that they ought to painted yellow like the rest of the ground equipment.
That was in the summer of '68. I think they found a nich later as a EW aircraft, and acquitted themselves well on the bombing mission that took out Qdafi's Air Force. The ejection module was superb if you had to bail out over the North Sea or a desert. Over the jungle, not so much.
 
I'm glad to see there's been progress in adapting the Navy's style arresting gear to runways other than at the end- do the F-15 & 16s have hooks? In the 50s and 60s the AF had a type of flexible fence at the overrun that was raised from the tower if there was enough time. But there were some century series fighters that on heavyweight landing couldn't stop on the runway if the drogue chute failed to deploy. For a few years the solution to that sort of emergency was a cable laid across the runway ahead of the overrun. When the nose wheel went over it, the cable would pop up and catch the main gear, and an inertial system would decelerate the aircraft. But that had some serious drawbacks too.
In this video of an F-104 accident, you can see there's no drogue chute and that a single fuel tank under the right wing is jettisoned or falls off just before contact. Unfortunately, the aircraft nose wheel fouled the cable and the plane slid to a stop pointing crossways with the cable alongside his right main gear. When the cable re-tensioner pulled it taught, the 104 was flipped over.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6LRMB_nVQ8"]Crash landing of an F-104 Starfigther - YouTube[/ame]
I don't know what they improved about the cable system, but it worked well for the F-111. Do any of you commercial pilots know if there's something similar in the works for stopping big aircraft?
 

David Morton

Lifetime Supporter
Put simply. No. Unless you count the long term car park, the approach lights on the opposite runway direction or the sea. China 605 found that the predicament his aeroplane was in far exceeded his skill set at Kai Tak (the old Hong Kong airport) This happened about one hour after I had just landed from Heathrow and was in my room in the Sheraton Causeway Bay. The upper deck girl on my flight rang me ( I thought I'd scored but no such luck) and said to open the curtains and look across the bay to Kai Tak. Another company (BA) 747 went around about 20 mins before the China 605 and diverted to Tapei but the CIhina sat there in the water for a couple of days until the SAS blew the tail fin off it ( it was interfering in the second segment climb (engine out )performance of outbound flight on runway 13).
 
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Keith

Moderator
Have to say a very good landing from those guys but I have (uninformed AKA possibly stupid) questions:

1. Why did they not dump fuel or burn more off as in the spectacular demonstration at the beginning of the video?

2. Why was a carpet of foam not laid on the runway landing area beyond the hook? They seemed to have plenty of time + plenty of fuel.

3. Why is banging out a last resort only - is it just the RAAF policy?
 

David Morton

Lifetime Supporter
1. Probably not an option.
2. Likewise
3. It can hurt or he might have already done it once. In some Airforces, twice often means back to sweeping floors and stacking shelves.
 
3. Why is banging out a last resort only - is it just the RAAF policy?

The F-111 ejection system blows the whole cockpit module off the aircraft and it's rockets carry it away in a complicated sequence, and I know of at least three instances where the parachute on the module (don't know the proper name) failed to deploy and the crew were lost. That has to weigh in the decision too.
 
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