OT: Aussie F-111 after pelican strike

[Daddy Dee]

http://www.pointniner.com/2008/04/pelican-shatters-aussie-f-111.html

3000ft on a bombing run. Pelican smashes the fiberglass nose cone and injested into the #2 engine which flames out.

These pics are amazing. It is a thousand wonders these guys didn't ding it in right there.

They were doing some serious flying to get this thing back on the ground.

Unbelievable.

[Groomlakearea51]

Especially having to flow slow while that one guy duck taped the cone....[]

[Daddy Dee]

I bet there was some duct tape on that fighter landing on the highway in your neighborhood.

[picky]

Pelicans are very large birds. It could have been much worse! -Glenn

[Arky]

Holy moly. How high do birds fly anyway?

[Def Leper]

Holy moly. How high do birds fly anyway?

From a web site on bird "records" (biggest, fastest, etc.)

A Ruppell’s vulture (gyps rueppellii) collided with a commercial aircraft over Abidjan, Ivory Coast, at an altitude of 37,000 feet in November 1973. The impact damaged one of the aircraft’s engines, but the plane landed safely. The species is rarely seen above 20,000 feet.

In 1967, about 30 whooper swans (Cygnus were spotted at an altitude of just over 27,000 feet by an airline pilot over the Western Isles, UK. They were flying from Iceland to Loch Foyle on the Northern Ireland/republic Ireland border. Their altitude was confirmed by air traffic control.

When I was in the USAF I was a flightline avionics technician for F-111 and F15 aircraft, and have seen many different types of damage caused in flight. This was certainly one of the most serious, although the worst I saw was a windscreen bird impact that killed the pilot, but the WSO was able to regain control and bring the aircraft back. The biggest danger in this incident was losing parts of the radome or attack radar and causing a flame out in the other engine. (The bird went into one engine and cause a flame out.) The F111 has large, effective stabilators (the horizontal tail surfaces) and a very good flight damper system that likely was most responsible for maintaining aircraft control. Despite some negative early publicity, the F-111 was the most versatile weapon in the USAF inventory. It was very maneuverable at low speeds, could carry large loads (including nukes), had a very effective attack radar system and terrain-following radar system allowing the aircraft to fly at very low altitudes in darkness or weather, and the swing-wings allowed efficient supersonic flight. The North Vietnamese called it "whispering death" because the fan jets were relatively quiet and the TFR allowed the aircraft to fly valleys in the dark to allow precision bombing of NVA targets. Many other countries later also found out the hard way about the F-111's ability to fly long distances and deliver smart weapons precisely on target. I didn't realize that the Aussies were still flying them. Good on ya, mates!

[customsteve01]

Birds inmpact A/c all the time. The majority of the time there is no damage. but some times there is like in this case. The bird hit the a/c at 3000 feet doing 300 plud knots. I would bet the impact damaged the nose cone but the air speed did the rest of the damage. The fiberglass composet structure of the nose cone unraveled in the wind. We had some damage last night to a plane going into Leon Mexico, this will require a leading edge change.

[ZAKO]

Any flight you can walk away from is a good flight.