- Hi, I'm Chuck Stout,
and in this episode of "Behind the Wings,"
we're going to look at the first mass produced,
variable geometry swing wing airplane, the FB-111.
This is gonna be cool.
(soft beat music)
It's time to go "Behind the Wings."
Here at the Wings Over the Rockies museum,
we have more than 70 aircraft
in our historic World War II era hangar,
and one of them is the FB-111A.
Let's take a closer look.
So, back in the mid 1960s,
the Air Force was looking for a replacement
for their aging B-52 Stratofortress bombers.
They already had the F-111 fighter,
but they decided to modify it
into a strategic nuclear bomber, a faster supersonic bomber.
And we just happen to have one right here.
So the FB-111 picked up a nickname along its career,
it's called the Aardvark.
Now aardvark is Afrikaans, South African for earth pig,
but this airplane is definitely not a pig.
It got the name because of the shape of its nose.
If you look at the profile of the nose,
it kind of goes down and then curves up.
The FB-111 is a similar,
but substantially different airplane
than the F-111 fighter.
It is a strategic nuclear bomber, supersonic, in fact.
It has longer wings, bigger engines,
stronger landing gear and more fuel capacity.
To make this episode even better, we have a special guest,
Major General Ray O'Mara from the Strategic Air Command,
and we're gonna talk about the FB-111.
So the FB-111 came out in 1967,
and you were flying this airplane just four years later.
Can you tell me how you got into the FB-111?
- Sure, in 1970, I finished my tour in B-52s
and I was assigned to the FB-111
of Plattsburgh Air Force Base.
I was a crew member in both bomb squadrons at Plattsburgh.
We had about 30 crews in each squadron
and about 35 airplanes.
I also served in the combat crew training squadron
as an instructor pilot.
I was the commander of the 528 Bomb Squadron.
I see the 528 Bomb Squadron patch
on the left nose wheel door.
I did that for about 13 months,
and then had the opportunity to be the deputy
to the chief of maintenance.
- So I understand you went from flying the B-52
to flying the F-111.
That must have been an interesting transition.
Can you tell us about that?
- There were only two crew members,
and it was a lot easier keeping track of one other person
than five other persons.
The FB-111 was a very comfortable airplane to fly.
It was newest equipment at the time,
and each of the airplanes smelled like new cars
when we got 'em.
It was very agile, it was very fast.
It had the latest avionics,
and the latest systems throughout the aircraft
and including the flight control system.
And I had the opportunity
when I was a squadron commander
deploying to Nellis to go through the Nellis range,
and I was able to go supersonic
at 100 feet above the ground, hand flying.
The terrain following radar
did not have a 100 foot setting.
And then we would climb out, go to Nellis and land.
And on that day it took me about four or five minutes
to be able to get my hand off the stick
because it was quite exciting to fly at 100 feet.
It was a very nice transition,
but a a natural one going from B-52s on alert
to FB-111s on alert.
- So what are some of the differences
in flight characteristics
between the B-52s and the F-111s?
- There were stark, the differences.
B-52, of course, was subsonic,
FB-111 had the capability to go up to Mach 2.2,
service ceiling of about 60,000 feet.
We had systems in it
like the automatic terrain following radar.
- [Narrator] Terrain avoidance radar
on the F-111 A will allow it to fly
low level missions, supersonically day or night.
- The autopilot, coupled to the radar,
would allow us to fly 200 feet above the ground
up to about 1,000 feet above the ground.
- So what's it like going from an airplane
with eight throttles to one that only has two?
- A lot easier on your hand
because you had only the two throttles,
and the FB-111 was very responsive,
particularly with the five stage afterburner,
and takeoff was always a kick,
20,000 pounds of thrust in each engine.
On my first flight at Westover Air Force Base in the B-52,
we were only airborne for about an hour.
And one of the wise guy navigators downstairs said,
"Hey Ray, did you ever wanna fly a single engine aircraft?"
And I said, "Yeah, it just didn't work out."
So the navigator says on interphone,
"Hey pilot, give him number 8 for the rest of the flight."
- An incredible story.
And did he?
- We got past that.
- Well, I know our viewers are interested
in taking a closer look at this airplane,
so let's go have a look.
- [Ray] Sure.
(soft beat music)
This is a very comfortable cockpit,
not a whole lot of room for storage,
so you had to be efficient.
The unique characteristic of this aircraft at that time,
was we had a capsule which extended
from that line just in front of the windscreen
all along about halfway up the fuselage,
and then up to the leading edge of the wings.
That capsule was our cockpit,
and was also our escape mechanism.
The capsule had pyrotechnic charges
which would sever the cables
and the connections to the aircraft,
and had a rocket which would fire us straight up.
And then three parachutes,
which would lower us toward the ground.
And we had three impact attenuation bags
to keep it from banging into the ground.
The capsule wasn't perfect,
but it had a very good, very good safety record.
- One of the most important characteristics of the FB-111
is the variable wing geometry
that the variable sweep wings.
Would you tell us a little bit about that please?
- Sure.
Again, another big difference between the B-52
and the FB-111, the variable geometry of the wing.
These wings are swept back at 72 degrees right now,
and the only time you'd have 'em swept that far back
would be flying supersonic,
either low altitude or high altitude.
If you ended up getting the wings stuck in that position
you'd have a very high approach speed, over 200 knots.
It gives you two challenges,
one, to keep it on the runway,
and two, not to blow the tires.
But normal flight for the first takeoff of the day,
your wings would be swept forward to 16 degrees,
leading edge slats out and flaps down.
And that makes for a very reasonable takeoff speed,
probably 128 knots.
Conversely, when you're coming back into land,
you would be at 16 degrees and about 130, 132 knots
for final approach speed.
There are also quite a few differences
between the FB-111 and the F-111s.
It had more powerful engines
and more weapons carrying capability.
- Speaking of the engines,
let's take a look at what was powering this thing.
- Sure.
(soft beat music)
These are Pratt & Whitney TF-30-P-7 engines that we had.
Same engine that the Navy had in their F-14 Tomcat.
This sharp device you see here would move as you
increase your speed to make a smaller aperture
to go in through the engine,
after burning engine, five stages of afterburner.
After they made the corrections to the engine,
it was pretty reliable
and actually quite a lot of fun to fly.
- So, General O'Mara,
we don't have engines in our FB-111 obviously,
but could you tell us a little bit about this?
There's some great stories about the fuel dump valve.
- If you took off, lost an engine,
and you had fuel tanks on the wings,
you want to lighten the aircraft before you came in to land
so you reduced the final approach speed.
We have a switch in the cockpit where you push the button
and it would dump as much fuel as you wanted to.
It also had a playful application.
If you went to dump and hit the afterburner,
you put a 75 foot flame out the back
and that impressed the onlookers.
The torch was bright enough and intense enough
that our satellites in space could detect them.
- This was a strategic bomber,
and you mentioned about the fuel tanks
to give it long range,
but I understand it carried its nuclear weapons internally
in a Bomb Bay.
Can we go take a look at that?
- Sure.
(soft beat music)
The FB-111 carried mainly nuclear weapons.
One was a short range attack missile,
one was a B-61 gravity bomb, the B-57 and a B-43.
Those are the four weapons that we carried.
We could carry two inside the Bomb Bay,
and up to four external.
But if we carried four external,
we couldn't carry fuel tanks.
So the normal configuration would be four nuclear weapons
and two fuel tanks.
Fortunately, never had to use one.
- Give us a little on the legacy of the FB-111.
- The legacy of the FB-111,
Our role in, it was triad, was to deter the Russians
from attacking us, and we were successful.
The FB-111, the B-1, the B-52,
the Minuteman missiles all stood alert
one week out of three.
Hopefully we'll get to a point where we can reduce the risk
of inadvertent nuclear war by reducing the number of systems
on alert in the Soviet Union, China and United States.
- General O'Mara, this has been a great pleasure for me,
and I'm sure it's gonna be very popular with our viewers.
And thank you for coming out to the museum today.
- Thank you very much, I've enjoyed it.
It's been over 31 years since the last time I flew one,
this was a great memory tickler.
- [Chuck] Now this is a great airplane,
and I know we couldn't cover everything,
but please leave your comments and questions
and we'll get to as many as we can.
So we've reached the end of the episode,
and if you subscribe, great.
If you don't subscribe, subscribe already.
And please come in and see our FB-111 A,
and our other swing wing airplanes,
the F-14 A Tomcat, the B-1A Lancer bomber,
and way over in the corner, our very exotic Russian MiG-23.
Well, this has been fun, but I gotta get back to work.
(soft beat music)