‘My crew chief asked if I wanted him to paint a Winnebago silhouette on the fuselage to record my “kill,”’ Brett Kriger, FB-111 pilot
Initially called the TFX (Tactical Fighter “X”), the F-111 was created to satisfy the U.S. Air Force’s requirement for a new tactical fighter-bomber. In 1960, the Department of Defense merged this need with a Navy demand for a new air superiority fighter. The Air Force’s F-111A took its first flight in December 1964, and the first units were delivered in 1967. However, the Navy’s F-111B program was eventually discontinued. Altogether, 566 F-111 aircraft of various versions were produced, with 159 of them being the F-111A. The aircraft was commonly called the Aardvark, but it did not officially receive that name until it was retired in 1996.
One notable aspect of the aircraft was its swing wings, which could move forward for takeoff and landing and sweep back at higher speeds. The F-111 was also capable of flying very low to the ground and striking targets in poor weather.
The FB-111 was a bomber variant of the F-111, equipped with sophisticated avionics systems.
Brett Kriger, former FB-111 pilot, recalls on Quora;
‘I was flying my FB-111 about Mach 1.2 at 200 feet above ground on a combat simulation mission at Red Flag in the Nellis Ranges through a gap in a small mountain range. There happened to be a road running through the same gap. A couple of seconds (about a third of a mile) before I crossed over it, I saw a large Winnebago type RV.
‘I completed my mission and went on with life, but got called in to my squadron commander’s office about a month later. It seems that somebody was a little lost and “inadvertently” drove his RV into a restricted area—even though it was clearly marked with a warning of low-flying supersonic aircraft. Seems like something they couldn’t see had caused a big boom and blown out several of their windows and a door. When a damage claim was reported, the Air Force investigated and found an AWACS track match to my aircraft for the time and date. The Air Force paid the claim of about $5500 even though the RV was where it shouldn’t have been, and I was in an authorized supersonic flight area.’
Kriger concludes;
‘The interesting thing to me was that I flew directly at and over him at 200 feet, and they didn’t see a thing. My crew chief asked if I wanted him to paint a Winnebago silhouette on the fuselage to record my “kill.”’
Photo by U.S. Air Force
