vídeo: http://mp3.news.com.au/bcm/f111.wmv
fonte: news.com.au
AN emergency landing by an F-111 today is the latest mishap for Australia's ageing fleet of the high performance strike fighters, due to be retired in four years.
The pilot and navigator both escaped uninjured after the RAAF jet made a successful belly landing and slid to a halt on the tarmac at Amberley air base near Brisbane after experiencing difficulties with its landing gear.
It is not known if it was one of the frontline C-model F-111s or one of the newer but less capable G-models used for training.
Under current plans, the entire F-111 fleet will be retired from 2010, with its role to be filled by F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters pending delivery of the first of the new F-35 joint strike fighters from about 2014.
The F-111 is intended for long-range low-level strike missions, flying at near tree or wave-top level by day or night, and that's always a risky business.
So far the RAAF has lost 10 crewmen in eight F-111 crashes.
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The most recent was in April 1999, when one of the jets slammed into an island in the South China Sea during a low level training mission off the eastern Malaysian coast. Both crewmen died instantly.
Before that an F-111 crashed at Guyra, in northern New South Wales, in September 1993, killing both crew. And before that another two died in an accident near Tenterfield, also in northern NSW, in April 1987.
The F-111 remains probably the most controversial Australian defence acquisition.
Twenty-four were ordered off the drawing board in 1963 with the aim of giving the RAAF a long-range capability to bomb the then-bellicose Indonesia into submission if need be.
At that time, Australia had not formally renounced the nuclear option and there appears to have been an unspoken understanding that F-111s would provide a means of delivering atomic weapons if it ever came to that.
But from the start, the project was plagued with technical problems and a continually escalating price tag.
The first F-111 was handed to the RAAF in September 1968 but promptly grounded, as USAF aircraft operating in Vietnam started falling from the sky with fatigue problems in the then-revolutionary variable swing-wings, which could move back and forwards according to speed.
In the meantime, the RAAF was forced to lease a squadron of Phantom fighter-bombers to make good the shortfall in capability. F-111 deliveries proper did not start until June 1973.
Early RAAF history of the F-111 was marked by a variety of mishaps, although there appears to have been no particular pattern.
In one case off the Evans Head bombing range in NSW in October 1977, an F-111 crashed after a bird strike.
An engine fire forced the crew of another F-111 to bail out off the New Zealand coast in October 1978.
That demonstrated the inherent survivability of the F-111's innovative escape system in which the entire crew module ejects – providing there's enough time. Neither crew member reported even getting wet feet.
The RAAF acquired another four F-111s in 1981 to make up aircraft losses. Similarly, the former Labor Government announced in 1993 it would acquire 15 used G-model aircraft from the USAF for the bargain basement price of $4.7 million each.
The idea was to extend the life of the F-111 fleet to around 2020 by providing a source of spares and attrition aircraft, although that has since changed.
Although a 1960s design, the F-111 remains an enormously capable aircraft. Affectionately referred to by crew as "the pig", the F-111 is able to perform low level long strike tasks better than any other aircraft flown by any air force anywhere in the world.
RAAF F-111s have been almost continuously modernised, with the latest avionics update program installing full digital electronic systems and a laser targeting system.
That allows the weapons operator to view the target on an in-cockpit screen and place the cross hairs precisely where he wants the bomb to strike.
As well as laser-guided bombs, the F-111s can be equipped with Harpoon anti-ship missiles, longer range AGM-142 guided missiles, air to air missiles, or a very large quantity of old-fashioned "dumb" bombs.
