What’s the backstory on the efficacy of belly landing, to risk trashed airplane after ejection vs. trashed airplane and dead crew? I was amazed they chose that, and perhaps I missed it but the decision to proceed wasn’t examined.
I never knew non-Carrier aircraft had arresting hooks. Do all?
They couldn’t foam up the runway or something as well to better prepare the landing? And I thought I’d see emergency vehicles and fire trucks all the way down the line…
I assume fighter jets have moderate armour especially on the underside, so this is unlikely to do as serious damage as with a commercial aircraft made out of thin aluminum. I would guess from the video that the engine, the most expensive part, was unharmed in this landing.
On a nice smooth runway, at low speed, the craft will skid rather than tumble and break up; this is not so risky that an ejection is preferred.
I know smaller retractable-gear aircraft usually have skid strips on the bottom, so if a gear-up landing is called for, there will be minimal damage beyond bent propellers.
Wild! And it ended very well for the pilot and navigator.
They said ejection is the last resort. Once you eject you can kiss pretty much the entire airplane goodbye. Much less would be salvageable, compared to the belly landing.
No, it is rare. Not common at all.
A guess here but maybe they did not foam the runway because that’d be a lot of foam, over a long distance. Maybe they don’t have that much. Plus, the foam would lubricate the runway and the F-111 would slide farther and faster. As it was, I’m surprised at how quickly it stopped, and whole. Quite amazing, really.
I’ll check with my USAF brother, who flew F-111s and F-16s. He probably knows about this, or at least the USAF one referred to in this video.
But wow, that was pretty wild. And it went so very well.
One other thing: how do you lose an entire wheel on takeoff? I have a pretty good idea. I’d love to see a picture of the lug nuts sitting next to some mechanic’s tool box. Those lug nuts are probably in the trunk of his car. Heads probably rolled a little, for that.
1.a. You may be able to salvage some of the aircraft after a belly landing.
b. F-111 don’t use individual ejection seats. The crew section separates. This may not be all that safe.
c. Where is the remaining plane going to go after the crew abandons it in flight?
Re foam:
Even if it was available as an option, he was no doubt on minimum fuel, so fire risk may not be the biggest consideration. Perhaps it’s better to have a normal clear runway to visualize.
ETA, maybe not - just heard pilot say there was 3000 liters of fuel on board. Not sure why.
Indeed, some have been rebuilt and put back into service. Expensive, but less so than buying a new aircraft.
No worse than an ejection seat; which is to say: Chancy.
With all that fuel on board, they could’ve easily enough punched out somewhere relatively safe. Emphasis on “relative.” Belly landing is much more rough on the crew, but puts the aircraft preciesly into a controlled location, with emergency support right there.
As noted elsewhere, the F111 was designed with naval service in mind. For those aircraft without tailhooks, there are always crash barriers (essentially really big nets).
You’d need to ask airfield emergency services - I’m sure they have a protocol.
That was the arresting hook doing its job. You can see when it snagged the arresting wire at 5:49, it caused them to pitch nose-down and drop onto the runway; then the arresting wire did virtually all of the decel. Without it, they’d have slid a helluva lot farther.
A variant was intended for use by the Navy. The “B” model was in initial development in parallel with the Air Force “A” model. The two models were supposed to have a large percentage of design and parts in common, but actually tailoring the “B” to real-world Naval operation needs (including a huge weight reduction program) meant final parts commonality was well below 50%.
The Navy, and the Navy’s contractor Grumman, eventually pulled out of the program because of escalating costs and a not-very-suitable-for-carrier-ops product. “Too heavy” was the heart of the latter complaint.
A lot of the requirements and some of the design features got pulled into the Navy’s final aircraft for this procurement, the F-14 Tomcat. (Swing-wing, heavy, long-range, high-speed, air-to-air missile sled with very advanced beyond-visual-range missiles and supporting radar.)
Even the -A model had an arresting hook, although it was not as heavy-duty and intended for emergency runway arresting systems. I think most US fighter designs did and still do, like the F-15 and F-16. Even the F-22 has them.
A few things to add. No extra armour on pretty much any aircraft except the A-10 and that surrounds the pilot not the belly. There may be the odd exception but not fast jets.
It’s not uncommon for a lot of fast flyers to also have arrestor hooks; many military runways have cables to slow aircraft in the event of brake (or on older planes, deceleration parachute) failure. The F-5A/Bs I started working on had arrestor hooks and it was fun to tell the visiting US Navy guys during Maple Flag our “T-38s” were carrier capable. You might land it once, but you’ll be craning it off the deck if you did…
Finally, landing with empty tanks could pose a larger risk of explosion as it is closer to having the ideal ratio of fuel/air in the tank. JP-4,or JP-8 is relatively hard to ignite compared to say gasoline so having the tanks more full might mean afire/ more clean-up but less likelihood of a giant fireball.
Do you have a cite that this is standard procedure and safer under these circumstances? I don’t dispute that an intact fuel tank is more likely to ignite if it’s partially empty. But in a potential crash, I would think the greater risk is that a tank ruptures, and that spilled fuel ignites.
On a related note;
Wouldn’t these fuel tanks (if connected via under-wing pylon) be pretty resistant to being damaged easily given that they are attached to a fighter/bomber jet? Small arms fire and the like? Genuinely curious here.
An airplane’s primary defense is to not get hit in the first place. Anything you can do to make a hit more survivable is also going to reduce the plane’s performance, which is usually going to be a net decrease to survivability.
All US fighters have tailhooks. Even models that were/are never intended for Navy use. The tailhook is the emergency backup braking system. The hook on, e.g. a USAF F-15 or F-16 is a lot less stout than the one on, say, a USN F-18. It’s expected to be used once in the lifetime of the airplane, not once per flight.
AFAIK all the European land-based fighters also have hooks. Every runway at every US & NATO airbase worldwide has arresting cables. As do the US civil fields that are also Air National Guard bases.
Just in front of the main gear legs is a large door hanging down at a shallow angle. In addition to being part of the gear doors that panel is the speed brake. Independently of the gear extension that door can swing open a lot farther than it is in that picture. In fact it can stick darn near straight down.
By design, that door is an emergency backup landing skid. It’s designed to be extended and held down by hydraulic pressure while the crew lands on it.
The USAF T-37 had a similar speedbrake just behind the nose gear that could also be used in a pinch as a skid plate for a gear up landing.
Over the F-111’s life there have been quite a few controlled deliberate gear up landings. The idea is to keep the gear retracted, extend the speed brake and tail hook, then land near the start of the runway and slide a short distance until the tail hook catches a cable and drags the airplane to a stop in a fairly short distance.
I didn’t say it in the previous post, but the arresting gear on a carrier stops the airplane in 100-150 feet. The stuff at a USAF base is intended to stop the airplane in more like 500 feet. Still abrupt, but far less aggressive than carrier ops.
I used to help on the second shift landing crew for our F-106. Not only does it have a hook, we were required by regulations to install the arresting cable every time it landed (this at a commercial airport, Cleveland Hopkins). Our job was to set up and remove the cable and place the parachute into our pickup. We used to hear the commercial pilot chatter as they taxied over the cable that they were not used to.
The arresting system was not fancy, just very heavy chain buried under asphalt that got ripped out in a one time use. The arresting cable was strung with heavy rubber pucks that kept it a few inches above the runway. Ours never needed to use the system.
Foaming a runway has been demonstrated to be useless. That went out back in the 1960s.
A base doesn’t have that many crash / rescue trucks. Maybe a dozen, more likely a half-dozen. So you put them nearby where you expect the airplane to stop, but far enough out of the way that if things go badly you don’t have a plane/truck collision as the grand finale of an already bad day.
Then once the airplane stops, they zoom to where that is. Typically taking 30-ish seconds.
