Back in May I blogged about the upcoming final retirement of the last in service General Dynamics F-111 of the RAAF. Well that time has come for the beast some 46 years after the first prototype first flew. I won't rehash everything I wrote back then, but that day is now almost here. On Dec 2, 2010 the F-111 will be retired and for fan's of this massive strike plane its a sad day. These beasts were operated by the US Air Force in a few variants, including long-range strike, and with the EF-111 Raven variant, electronic warfare. In USAF service F-111s participated in the Vietnam War, the US attack on Libya in 1986, and Operation Desert Storm in 1991 against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. They were retired in 1997 by the USAF and lived another 13 years in the sky in Australia until now. The last former USAF F-111G was retired in 2007 by the RAAF.
As noted in the previous blog these will be replaced by FA-18F's built by Boeing and fitted for various roles until the real replacement for the F-111 arrives in the form of the F-35 JSF. The FA-18's are holding the door open and will do an excellent job in their multi role capacity. In fact the FA-18's have less range and are slower than the F-111 although they are much more efficient to operate and have modern communications equipment which transmits data seamlessly between airborne platforms. Perhaps more than any other deficiency, it is this shortcoming which has pushed the RAAF to retire the type even before its original replacement is ready to be fielded.
But to any airplane or airshow fan the most missed aspect of the F-111 is the dump and burn......
1 comment:
I have learned a lot from this blog site about the military aircraft that keeps our nation free and the brave men who fly them. Since my forte is commercial aviation, this is an all-new format for me to learn! No doubt, this plane owes a lot to the earlier jets of the late 1950's and early 1960's. Fantastic!
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