F-111 Aardvark, The Aircraft that Defined an Era

The F-111 started out as a cost-saving aircraft to work for both the USAF and the US Navy but ended up being rejected by the Navy, however, it went on to be on of the most trusted assets for the USAF for the next 30 years and its advanced design inspired a generation of high-performance swing-wing fighters and bombers in the US, Soviet Union, and Europe over the next 2 decades.
This is the story of the F-111 Aardvark.

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Written, Researched and Presented by Paul Shillito

Images and footage: Images and footage : General Dynamics, USAF, US Navy, RAAF, RAF, Grumman

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[declanmcquay]

My uncle was one of the engineers sent from Australia to help (in his words) keep the wings on the F-111, as he specialised in stress and fatigue in air craft.

[LordandGodofYouTube]

I was working just outside of Darwin, Australia one day and I looked up and one of these flew over my head at about a few hundred meters altitude, backwards, at about 50 knots or so. It was hanging off of the bottom of a helicopter on its way to an aircraft museum. One of the strangest things I've ever seen.

[Anamnesia]

I always had a soft spot for the F-111... In Australia you'd see them all the time at major Race shows (like Formula-1) where they'd do a flyby with their famous Dump and Burn.
I vividly remember the 1985 Adelaide F1 Grand Prix (the first Adelaide Grand Prix being in 1984). It was a cool & cloudy day. The F-111's did their flyby with dump and burn & even from 200m above us, you could feel the heat from the flamage - a most welcoming warmth on such a chilly day!

[inmyopinion]

"Suffered less losses" because Texas Instruments delivered the FLEER scanner system. My Father worked on its development. I got to see the unit on a shake table when I was 12. Father-Son Day only came once a year. Christmas, Fourth of July, my they all fell short to what went on there. I would not miss that day. I saw a piece of glass the size of a tennis ball that would cost a million dollars. One of 12 lenses spinning at 20, 000 RPM to read the elevation related to forward location at 600 MPH, 50 feet off the ground! THIS system on the F111 was a prototype eventually ending up as the guidance system for the Cruise Missile !

[RCAvhstape]

Shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane survived an ejection from an F-111 earlier in his career. He called that his "first" rocket ride.

[CoopaCoop]

Always find it so crazy how all these plane designs look basically brand new even though a lot of them are over 50 years old. Wild.

[Bdub]

Five of my eight years in the USAF were involved with the F111F at Mtn Home AFB, and the F111A in Thailand and Nellis AFB. As an avionics technician I was thrilled that the electronics were cutting edge at the time, but our shop kept very busy with repairs to the Line Replaceable Units and the actual test stations and central computer that ran them. This was before the age of disk drives of course, and we loaded punch tapes into the central computer which ran the tests on the LRUs at the test stations that the central computer controlled. My last three years were spent supporting the new (at the time) F15A.
My USAF experience led to a career in electronics, troubleshooting and repair, training, technical writing.
Can't say I owe it all to the F111, but it sure was an exciting way to kick off my career.

[grantm]

Technically any aircraft that crashes on land is a "groundbreaking aircraft"

[luke]

As a kid I would build tester models. The F-111A was my third model I ever built. I would hang them from my ceiling with fishing line. The wings moved. I had it dogfighting mig 17-F. Not exactly historical I don't think. I must have built 50 blackbird modles. I stuffed 3 E rocket engines in a larger model and it actually flew. The sight of this jet brought back so many memories.

[TheRpg]

Note that even though the F-111 was retired in USAF service 1996 and the EF-111 in 1998, The Royal Australian Air Force retired them in 2010!

[tech]

I can still remember watching two of those Jets fly from north to south the entire distance of Panamint Valley in California. When I picked up my field glasses, I was overjoyed to watch them playing tag with one another, the one pushing out in front slowly, opening the wings and slowing down while the one in back folded the wings and sped up and they were doing this down the whole valley. Of course I don’t think anyone was around for 20 miles just me doing my prospecting. I’m guessing this might’ve been 40 years ago but I really can’t remember anymore. I think I was about 2000 feet elevation, and the jets were almost even. Thinking back now, I tracked them for about 10-15 miles before they disappeared into the forbidden zone, and they were on the other side, into the Slate Range, not on the west facing range nearest Briggs cabin.

[tepidtuna]

I remember these from an airshow in Sydney's west in the early 1980s. I watched it fly silently overhead at tremendous speed, followed a few seconds later by the most insanely loud crack and thunder.
Earlier that day I met and shook hands with Chuck Yeager (retired). What an amazing day for a kid.

[mountvernon]

I worked in-shop avionics on SAC's FB-111A fighter/bombers. I loved working on the Inertial Navigation system and Terrain Following RADAR systems. The FB-111A also had the Astrotracker, which tied in with the doppler RADAR and Inertial systems. That system would lock onto a star for navigation. The FB's had the longer wings and updated avionics, and regularly won SAC's Bomb-Nav competitions. These were only at 2 bases in the US - Plattsburgh in upstate (*way* upstate!) NY, and Pease in New Hampshire. Amazingly, I am watching this video the day after we returned from an F-111 reunion in Layton, Utah where we had around 200 of the folks that flew or maintained these aircraft, getting together with people that we may not have seen for the past 45 years!

[Chris_Toney]

My father (Ben Toney) spent his entire career working on the F-111 program. He retired as the F-111 Program Directory. Towards the end of his career the USAF had retired their fleet, and he spent a lot of time supporting the RAAF. It was a beautiful aircraft.

[josephglatz]

Fun fact, the EF-111 Raven actually has a single air to air kill credited to it. An Iraqi Mirage F-1 tried to intercept an EF-111 during Desert Storm at low level, and ended up crashing into the desert during the high speed chase. The Raven crew, Captain James Denton and Captain Brent Brandon were credited with a maneuver kill as a result.

[theyapsta]

I saw one of these take off when I was a high school kid back in the 80's at an air show at Ohakea airforce base in NZ. To this day it was straight up the loudest thing my ears have ever been exposed to. You could really feel it too.
The F15 was there too. Took off and did a vertical climb with full afterburners until it almost disappeared and then came back down again trailing vapours off the wing tips into an almost supersonic low pass.
I'll never forget the F111 though.

[mattfrederick]

Thanks for this video. My dad was a flight test engineer on the F-111 at Edwards AFB in the late 60’s. Always love learning more about what he worked on.

[K-Effect]

The F-111 still has the coolest pilot ejection system of any aircraft. I think the original B-1 bomber started off with this type of injection system but they opted out for a more traditional type like the B-58 had.

[brendanayres]

I remember fishing at the top end of Fraser Island in Australia and on more than one occasion having the crap frightened out of me by two F-111s as they came ripping up the west coast of the island on a training run, just a football-kick off the deck, pivot side-by-side around the very top of the island, and then rip down the east coast. The skill, sight and noise was incredible. What a show!

[maryjaneaskew]

Reading all the comments you can see how much loved the f111 was in Australia.

I was good friends with a pilot out of Amberly and was told that the "pig" came from its unusual cockpit and nose design that resembled a pig snout. The planes were bought by the RAAF due to the unrest in Indonesia at the time hence why they had a different configuration to the US versions. Not to dog fight but to be a ultra fast long range bomber.

Last i saw one was in 2007 off the Kangaroo Point cliffs at the Brisbane Riverfire festival. The pilots came in so low i could look straight across at them in the cockbit. Then they lit up the afterburner and everything was orange and you could feel the heat. Then proceeded at a steep climb over the story bridge and this thing then took off like a bat out of hell heading for space.

I will never forget it.