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This was copy/pasted from a cached page from f111.net:
Combat Lancer The F-111A's Introduction to War
Volume 24, Number 2
by Charlie Cooper
The first Combat Lancer attack mission was flown on the night of 25 March 1968. Again, Colonel Dethman and his right-seater, Captain Rick Matteis, were in the lead in F-111A, 66-0018. The target was a bomb dump on Tiger Island on the coast of South Vietnam; the bomb run was made at low altitude from the west so that the egress from the area could be made over water. Although heavy cloud cover prevented accurate bomb damage assessment, the mission, and the others flown that night, were considered successful. Lt Colonel Ed Palmgren, the unit's operations officer, flew later that same night against targets near Dong Hoi, on North Vietnam's southern panhandle, to which attacks were limited by President Johnson's “bombing pause.”
Colonel Palmgren noted, “The only time they knew we were there was when the bombs went off.” A pattern of single-ship night interdiction missions at low level in any weather was established that night. It was a pattern followed for as long as the attack F-111s were operational.
Sadly, the pattern of success was broken when the first Combat Lancer loss was experienced just three days later. Major Henry McCann and his right-seater, Captain Dennis Graham, were lost on 28 March 1968, when F-111A 66-0022 went down. They had departed Ta Khli on a bombing mission and had established voice communications with “Invert,” the radar site. They were being tracked on radar as they proceeded toward their target, but they had not made contact with the Airborne Command Center. Since the Rules of Engagement in effect at the time required that contact prior to penetration of North Vietnamese air space, they were forced to turn back toward Ta KhIi. Radar surveillance continued for a time but contact was lost during a shift change at the radar site and the aircraft disappeared. The crew and the aircraft wreckage were never recovered although a generous reward was posted and an intense electronic search was conducted. The North Vietnamese claimed to have shot the aircraft down but the claim was discounted based on reports from the radar site.
A new media frenzy began. Although this F-111A was the 813th aircraft lost in the war in Vietnam, it was treated as if it had been the first. Concern that the Russians would find the aircraft and capture its technological secrets resulted in new press and political demands that its use in combat be discontinued.
The second accident, which occurred just two days later, on 30 March, added fuel to the fire. F-111A 66-0017 was descending from 10,000 and entering Laotian air space enroute to the North Vietnamese panhandle. The wings were at the 50° sweep position (roll control is transferred to the horizontal slab at 42° of sweep) when a violent pitch-up maneuver was followed by an uncontrolled roll. Unable to regain control of the aircraft, the crew ejected, and Major Sandy Marquardt and Captain Joe Hodges rode the escape capsule down and landed safely. Fearing that they had landed in Laos, they made their way into the jungle to hide. After they had traveled less than a mile, they were picked up and returned to base by an HH-3E Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter piloted by Major Wade Oldermann. The F-111A wreckage was found and examined by an Air Force accident investigation team. They concluded that a solidified tube of unused sealant, used to repair the honeycomb skin, which was found in the aircraft impact crater had caused the accident. They surmised that this sealant tube had somehow become lodged in the flight control system. (Subsequent investigation revealed that the sealant had been used at the Grumman factory on Long Island where the F-1 fuel tank, located on the under side of the aircraft's nose, had been manufactured. Aircraft 66-0017 impacted the ground in an inverted position, and the sealant tube was thrown to the periphery of the wreckage when the fuel tank ruptured.) This conclusion was later disproved, but only after a number of high-level briefings had provided the erroneous information. Major Marquardt and Captain Hodges had returned almost immediately after the accident to the General Dynamics factory and, with the help of the manufacturer and the simulator, they were able to duplicate what they had experienced on the night of 30 March. Careful investigation determined that the structural failure of an actuating valve in the stabilator system, which controls both the pitch and roll axes of the airplane, was at fault in the loss of aircraft control. Here again, North Vietnamese claims of shooting the aircraft down were proven false.
While all of the media attention was focused on the two accidents, scarce note was taken of the missions flown during the next 22 days. Those missions brought the Combat Lancer total to 55 in the month that the F-111As had been in theater. Those missions were flown without one loss to enemy action while delivering their bombs with great accuracy on a variety of targets, facts that were generally ignored in the press and in the Congress. The first two aircraft lost in Vietnam were replaced on 5 April by F-111As, numbered 66-0024 and 66-0025, flown to Thailand by Lt Colonel Ben Murph and Captain Fred De Jong. Both were Vietnam combat veterans in the F-105, and Colonel Murph had assumed command of the 428th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Nellis. He took over command of the Detachment in Vietnam.
The third accident, on 22 April 1968, and a similar one at Nellis AFB on 8 May resulted, first, in the suspension and, then, in the termination of Combat Lancer. Detachment 1 crewmembers, Lt Colonel Ed Palmgren, the unit's Operations Officer, and Lt Cdr “Spade” Cooley, a US Navy ex-change pilot, were lost on a Combat Lancer bombing mission into North Vietnam. Flying F-111A #66-0024, they had been in radar contact until they began their bomb run at altitudes between 200 and 500 feet. Although the aircraft and crew were never recovered, the assumption that they, too, had experienced loss of control due to the failure of the stabilator part is reasonable. At the bomb run altitudes, a loss of control, like that experienced by Maj Marquardt and Capt Hodges, would not have provided any time to eject from the aircraft. Here, too, North Vietnamese claims to have shot the aircraft down were false.
The Nellis crew of Majors Charlie Van Driel and Ken Schuppe were on a training mission over Utah when they experienced control loss. They ejected successfully and both the aircraft and crew were recovered. Thorough examination of the wreckage revealed that the same slab actuator valve had failed, this time because a “jam nut” designed to hold the valve together had not been safety wired. The valve was replaced throughout the fleet.
But, the die was cast and the Congress and the press were on the attack again, denouncing the aircraft as unsafe and defective. The Pentagon was back on the defensive. The five remaining Combat Lancer F-111As stayed on in Thailand, flying sporadically and locally, until they were re-turned to Nellis on 22 November. Upon arrival, Colonel Murph told the waiting crowd, “This is a hell of a fine airplane. I hope to see something good in print about it.”
It was noted earlier that the pain began in Washington and the gain in Vietnam. From the selection of the contractor and the insistence on commonality to the delays in the production schedule and the cost overruns, the opposition to the F-111 series of fighter-bombers was centered in the United States Congress and in the press. The ongoing pain created has been widely reported.
What has been missing is a summary of the gains achieved by Combat Lancer, an admittedly very early application of the con-troversial aircraft in what was essentially an operational test. The three accidents clearly over-shadowed the overall success of that test. The concept of single-ship low-level penetration in all weather was demonstrated 55 times by the F-111As and the crews from Detachment 1. Most of those 55 missions were flown at night, and more than half were flown in bad weather. On many of those adverse weather missions, bombing accuracy was as good as the daylight accuracy of other Air Force fighter-bombers. The critical element of surprise was regularly achieved and there was no combat damage attributable to the enemy. As the F-111s operating from Ta Khli required no tanker or electronic countermeasures support aircraft and no fighter escort; substantial cost savings were thus demonstrated. Overall, the F-111As provided twice the range with twice the payload, 20 percent more speed, and significantly higher navigational and bombing accuracy than the fighter-bombers they were destined to replace.
These gains were even more clearly demonstrated when the F-111As returned to Vietnam in 1972, in Operation El Dorado Canyon against Libya in 1986, and in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm against Iraq in 1990-91. Even Senator McClellan, the most outspoken of the many Congressional opponents of the F-111, would have to salute the contributions made by the airplane and by the crews and support personnel who made Combat Lancer a successful test of its impressive capabilities.
Now, forty years after the initiation of the TFX development, it is interesting to note that there's nothing new under the sun. The Joint Strike Fighter Program is the Department of Defense's current program for defining an affordable, and largely common, strike aircraft weapons system for the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and for our allies, especially the British Royal Navy. As with McNamara and the “Whiz Kids,” the focus is on affordability. Boeing and Lockheed Martin have been selected to develop two flying concept demonstration aircraft each to show the capability to meet the needs of the several services for a new strike fighter aircraft to replace those now in service and to do it affordably. In order to meet the special requirements of each service, it seems clear that the proposed modularity, beyond what is common to all, is intended to alleviate the pain experienced with the F-111A and the F-111B. It is hoped that the gains to be made will be achieved at the flight test centers and not in combat.
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"Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves."
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