Flying in the weeds

摘要

Lieutenant Colonel Jack Funke, who flew 147 of his 369 combat missions in the F-111A, recalled: "The main problem with training was that the terrain-following radar, while complicated, could be learned with relative ease but building pilot confidence in the system for night and poor weather operations was something else. The pilot's workload was extremely high under these conditions. The TFR crosscheck was a normal instrument crosscheck with three additional inputs, the TFR scope, the radar altimeter and the pitch steering bar. This, combined with a turn-point every few minutes or continuous turns under combat conditions, was demanding to say the least. Added to all this was the fact that TFR flight at night, even at 1,000ft clearance plane settings, was totally against every pilot instinct. Every brain cell cried out to turn the thing off and climb! The training was difficult to make realistic and had to be conducted at night or the crew became too reliant on outside references."