In article . net,
meport wrote:

There was a segment about the F-111 and it's "introduction" into combat. It
seems that there were two very serious design flaws with the plane - the
movable wings would not move fast enough at low speeds, the speeds the
airplane needed to be at for low level operations, if they had to be moved
so the plane could accelerate out of danger if it started taking a lot of
ground fire and the avionics were not sophisticated enough to handle all
weather ground hugging flight in a tropical climate.

Whatever are you talking about?? Low speeds for low level
operations?? Howabout lugging a "slant eight" load of CBU 58s or Mk
82s at 540K/200AGL. And, at that speed, the wings would probably be at
54 anyway. Accelerate outta danger?? They were already at "the speed
of heat" on the way in, and faster yet on the way out, perhaps with
the wings at 72, if needed. The TFR worked fine except for isolated
areas of intense rainfall, and I stress "intense." It was also
suspected that later on, the Gomers were experimenting with highly
directional electronic countermeasures against the TFR. The initial
Harvest Reaper crashes were, apparently, due to a suspect weld in a
relatively small rod in the slab power actuator assembly. When the
rods were redesigned, the crashes stopped, and the A-model Vark went
on to a distinguished career in SEA, especially during Linebacker II.

Phil Brandt
F-111A WSO (Ret.)