General Dynamics F-111B

1/72 scale
Kit No. H-208
Retail: $44.00 (out of production)
Decals: Two versions – U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy
Comments: 1967 Revell kit released prior to demise of the F-111B; raised panel lines, working variable sweep wings, option for retractable landing gear, optional position dive brake

History

General Dynamics’ F-111B, a product of the TFX program (Tactical Fighter, Experimental) was expressly designed in the 1960’s to fulfill the U.S. Navy’s specification for a new Fleet Air Defense fighter. It flew for the first time on May 18, 1965. With the maiden flight, problems with the engines quickly emerged, perhaps justifying the skepticism which had dogged the F-111B from its inception. To achieve the range, speed, and loiter times required by dissimilar Air Force and Navy mission requirements, General Dynamics had selected the new, unproven Pratt & Whitney TF30 turbofan engine. The turbofans worked well in cruise mode, but their performance was disappointing during different parts of the flight envelope typical of military operations. A series of compressor stalls marred the F-111 test program, tarnishing the aircraft’s reputation among pilots.

Background. Why were Air Force requirements being taken into account for a Navy plane? The F-111B was derived from its Air Force counterpart, the F-111A which, although not without its own controversy, would enter service and go on to a long and storied career. But the F-111B might never have seen the light of day as a Navy procurement program if not for U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara. Taking office in January 1961 under President Kennedy, McNamara imposed a systems analysis approach and sought to apply it to two new fighter procurement programs that coincided with his arrival in Washington, D.C.: one for the Air Force, and one for the Navy.

The Air Force needed a replacement for the Republic F-105, capable of high-speed, low altitude penetration of enemy airspace, and a final supersonic dash to the target followed by delivery of either conventional or nuclear weapons. The Navy needed an all-weather fleet defense interceptor to replace the McDonnell F-4 Phantom, that would loiter at a patrol point some distance from the fleet for a specified period of time, and was capable of high subsonic speeds, with the ability to bring down Soviet attack aircraft with air-to-air missiles from a stand-off distance (at least 100 miles out) before the Russians could launch long-range air-to-surface missiles that could threaten the fleet.

McNamara’s approach emphasized cost savings, which quickly led to the conclusion that a single aircraft could and should fulfill the requirements of both services. While the two designs would not be identical, as they would each have specialized equipment fulfilling individualized service requirements (the Air Force version, for example, required installation of terrain following radar), maximum commonality of airframe components was also emphasized. These directives were embodied in the Pentagon’s TFX program under McNamara’s direction.

Shake-up of the Military Procurement Process
McNamara’s approach was a direct threat to the military services’ previous autonomy in terms of aircraft planning and development. It threw a monkey wrench into what had up until that time (early 1960’s) been their longstanding procurement process, which invariably deferred to their respective professional military and technical judgment. Previously they had been given a budget, and left to their own devices as to how to develop what they needed within that budget. But in response to “McNamara’s TFX,” many in the Navy were, to put it politely, highly skeptical that it was possible to design a single aircraft that could meet all of their requirements and those of the Air Force.

While the Air Force and the Navy had a history of evaluating and, on a selective basis, adopting one another’s aircraft, such instances had been relatively few, and on their own respective initiative. Independent of McNamara’s drive toward standardization of equipment, the Air Force would adopt the Navy’s new F-4 Phantom by 1963. It would also adopt the Navy’s A-7 Corsair II, just as the Navy had adopted in the 1950’s a navalized version of the Air Force’s F-86 Sabre, the FJ-2 and FJ-3 Fury.

Early Resistance
But the TFX was altogether a different animal. Never before had there been a joint service tactical fighter. While the logic of it would be undeniable in future years, with the rise of multi-role fighters of increasing sophistication and the closely related escalating cost of combat aircraft development, in the early 1960’s it was a revolutionary concept. Accordingly, within a few weeks of the February 14, 1961 Pentagon order that the two services study development of a fighter based on the TFX, resistance surfaced when the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research and Development wrote “…the Navy considers that the TFX is not suitable for Navy use….The Navy now has better aircraft for our purposes in being and development.” The Air Force response was similar. The military’s initial reply to McNamara’s directive was in essence, “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

McNamara, undeterred, continued to demand a joint service TFX program, assigning development responsibility to the Air Force and requiring them to work closely with the Navy. Friction continued unabated until in August 1961 both services again formally rejected the TFX as “technically unfeasible.” In fairness to the services, the aircraft each needed had quite different missions and accordingly, different requirements — and that of the Navy would change during the TFX development program as the 1960’s progressed and the U.S. became more deeply involved in VIetnam. As one General Dynamics official reportedly said, “It’s a little like looking for a Volkswagen with Ferrari performance, Rolls-Royce appointments, and Mack truck carrying capability.”

McNamara, reasoning that TFX would get more traction if placed directly in the hands of the aerospace industry, put out a Request for Proposal for a single design, and took a direct hand in specifying the requirements, since the Navy and Air Force could not or would not agree. Six aircraft manufacturers responded by the December 1961 deadline, and after preliminary review two proposals, from Boeing and General Dynamics, were the finalists.

Selection Board Over-ruled
A joint US Navy-US Air Force selection board was convened to evaluate the Boeing and General Dynamics designs. In an unlikely development, after rejecting the very concept of the TFX, and strenuously resisting McNamara’s cost-saving drive toward “commonality,” the two services surprised many in the defense industry when they agreed that the Boeing design would meet both their needs. In yet another surprise and a controversial and unprecedented move at the time, McNamara rejected the selection board’s choice and announced that the TFX would be built by General Dynamics.

While McNamara was widely criticized for the decision, which triggered a Congressional investigation, an in-depth assessment of the evaluation by Robert J. Art in his book, The TFX Decision, presents convincing evidence that McNamara’s action was justified. One point was that Boeing’s design did not meet the Air Force’s low-altitude, supersonic dash requirement. Another was that McNamara had reason to question how realistic Boeing’s cost projections were. He ultimately concluded that the General Dynamics design was acceptable to both services and likely entailed less cost and less risk in development and production.

Overweight Interceptor?
Many commentaries on the F-111B have emphasized that it was overweight for carrier operations, and this was a factor in its cancellation. While it weighed more than the Navy wanted, and more than General Dynamics and its sub-contractor Grumman had projected, it is not clear that the resulting aircraft was unacceptable operationally — nor was it heavier than should have been expected to meet the design requirements. Like any carrier-borne aircraft, the F-111B had to be rugged enough to withstand catapult launches, with an airframe and landing gear robust enough to handle arrested landings. Add to this the machinery required to operate its variable geometry wings, along with fuel, ordnance (which included six long-range AIM-54 missiles), and search radar, and it is no mystery why its overall weight was a constant issue.

After the empty weight problem became apparent in late 1963, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations tried unsuccessfully to get Paul Nitze, the new Secretary of the Navy who had just taken office in November 1963, to withdraw from the program. Nitze overruled him and supported McNamara after reviewing the F-111B’s projected weight and performance.

Interestingly, during the Super Weight Improvement Program, established to get the F-111B within “acceptable” weight limits, the Navy refused to accept some of the suggested requirement changes which they would later deem acceptable in “their” fighter (what would become the Grumman F-14). These included elimination of the ejectable crew module and its replacement with standard ejection seats (a move which significantly reduced the aircraft’s empty weight), reduced loiter time (which allowed a reduction in the amount of fuel to be carried), and fewer Phoenix missiles (the F-14 would typically carry four, compared to the F-111B’s six).

Military and Political Factors
As the F-111B program progressed even in the face of Navy resistance, outside factors would further complicate its entry into fleet service. The first of these was the Navy’s growing air combat experience in Vietnam, which pointed up the fact that the F-4 Phantom was at a profound disadvantage against aircraft like the smaller, more agile, gun-equipped MiG-17, because the F-4 had no gun (a feature also noticeably absent from all versions of the F-111). Part of the Vietnam air combat experience was also driving home the painful lesson that dogfighting skills, which a fair number of pilots lacked compared to decades past, remained a necessity despite the appearance of the air-to-air missile — and test pilots agreed that the F-111B was no dogfighter (nor had it been designed for that purpose).

Finally, the development of new, more capable Soviet fighter aircraft such as the Sukhoi Su-11 and Su-17 during 1965-1967 had the Navy brass concerned that the dogfighting requirement had been sorely neglected in both their own specifications and the F-111B’s development. The Admirals now worried that they needed a true air superiority fighter, and the elephant in the room was that the Air Force F-111, like the F-105 it was intended to replace, was a bomber, despite its “F” designation. This was the airframe the Navy was being compelled to develop into a fleet defense fighter. All of these factors heaped fuel on the Navy’s pre-existing desire to kill the F-111B. If further evidence is needed, when the Air Force first deployed the F-111 to Southeast Asia in March 1968, it was as an attack aircraft — not a fighter.

Political events also took a hand. On February 29, 1968, McNamara resigned as Secretary of Defense. During his tenure, it was widely known within the Pentagon that failure to publicly support the F-111B could be a career-limiting move. Back in 1963, Admiral George Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations, by his own account had been fired for not fully supporting the Secretary of Defense before Congress regarding the selection of General Dynamics over Boeing as the F-111B’s prime contractor. Within a month of McNamara’s departure, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, thanks to questions fed to the Chairman, Senator John Stennis, by an enterprising naval officer, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations went on the record stating his preference that the Navy adopt a new fighter other than the F-111. Equally damning testimony about the F-111’s power plant gave Stennis the ammunition he needed to justify cutting off funding for the program, and it was formally cancelled in July 1968.

Observations of Those in the Know
George Marrett, who first flew F-111s as an Air Force test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California, would also later fly the Navy’s version as a civilian test pilot. Marrett wrote that although the F-111 was “grossly underpowered, and had poor cockpit visibility for a fighter,” it was instrumental in perfecting the AIM-54 Phoenix missile and its associated AN/AWG-9 radar system. “I wouldn’t want to maneuver one against a fighter,” he said in an interview, “but purely as an interceptor, it would have done well against bombers and cruise missiles.”

What Navy pilots wanted was an agile fighter with guns for close-in combat, not a big missile-armed bus. Ironically, the F-111B was designed, per the Navy’s initial specifications, to be the latter, effectively an updated version of the Douglas F6D Missileer. Mike Glenn, a former maintenance supervisor, believes the Navy would have been smart to buy about 40 or so F-111Bs and deploy small detachments of them to carriers for fleet air defense. “This would have given Grumman time to properly develop the F-14,” he explains. Once the F-111B was cancelled, the Tomcats would have their own share of teething problems. “By the last F-111B built, Grumman and GD had worked out the bugs. I will tell you that [prototype] number 7 could fly circles around our early F-14s—longer, faster, and very maintenance-friendly compared to earlier F-111Bs and F-14s.”

In his in-depth analysis of the TFX saga, Illusions of Choice: The F-111 and the Problem of Weapons Acquisition Reform, Robert Coulam wrote, “versus other aircraft, and certainly for its fleet air defense mission, the F-111B provided substantial increases in Navy capabilities.” Coulam also wrote that although Navy Secretary Paul Ignatius (1967-68) believed that the F-111B had technical problems, “he also recognized that the Navy had an ‘emotional’ problem with the plane.” In a 2003 interview, Ignatius said of the jet: “The more I looked into it, the more I became convinced that the matter had reached such an emotional state that even if the F-111B, the Navy version, turned out to be an excellent airplane…the Navy still wouldn’t want it.”

Post Script
While the F-111B was fraught with controversy from its inception, and will likely remain the subject of heated debate well into the future, it is an instructive example of the dynamics of power struggles between civilian and military authorities for control over procurement policy. Was McNamara wrong in seeking cost savings, commonality and in imposing the TFX on the military services? Perhaps not in concept, for waste and unnecessary duplication of effort were legitimate issues in military procurement, then and now. But his top-down management style overlooked the need to address the political dynamic of procurement policy within the U.S. Navy itself, to get the Admirals’ sincere buy-in on the decisions being made before they were announced. And it is possible that the F-111 itself was not the ideal aircraft upon which to model the TFX program, since it was essentially a bomber. The U.S. Navy ultimately triumphed with the entry into service of the Grumman F-14 in 1974, the complex but highly capable fleet defense interceptor of a type it had wanted all along. From the Navy’s viewpoint, the F-14 was far more suitable for its needs, but ironically it shared many design characteristics in common with the F-111B, an aircraft whose primary and cardinal sin was that it simply was not the Navy’s choice.

Construction

Revell’s F-111 TFX, initially released in 1966, is dated. It is not overloaded with detail, features raised panel lines, and has no weaponry at all.  The cockpit featured an instrument panel with raised detail, although it lacked a control yoke.  But it allowed modelers to build either the Air Force or Navy version. Its key virtue is its rather straightforward construction. Since I decided early on to build the Navy version in flight, with its landing gear up, I was able to skip several of the early steps focusing on assembling the landing gear.

After cementing the landing gear doors and air inlet diverters in place, I focused on the main challenge of this kit, trying to reconfigure an accurate late version of the F-111B’s nose. There were a total of seven pre-production models of the F-111B before the program was cancelled in July 1968. There is a great deal of commentary online about Revell’s early F-111 kit having an inaccurate nose as far as the Navy version is concerned. The nose provided in the kit is a bit too short and stubby even for the early versions of the B, and completely wrong for the last two versions which saw the nose of the aircraft extended by two feet, to adjust the airframe’s center of gravity and cure a tip-back problem that occurred with the earlier models. This resulted in a nose that was noticeably longer than the early versions of the B, but still significantly shorter than the Air Force version which we all know today. It was one of these later B versions that I wanted to model, with markings it might have borne had it entered fleet service.

After searching in vain for some weeks for the 1/72 scale conversion set for the F-111B manufactured by Pete’s Hangar but now out of production, I realized I would have to do my own garage conversion. Relying heavily on the images and research of Tommy Thomason, I set out to extend the nose myself using a scratchbuilt four-sided plasticard frame, supported by Milliput and covered in Tamiya white putty — with a final layer of Milliput and Mr. Surfacer 500 for those difficult-to-sand areas.

Scaling it out as best I could, I extended the nose by a length of 7mm and performed a great deal of shaping and sanding, using a layer of Tamiya putty sandwiched between two layers of Milliput to build up the area of the 7mm “nose plug” — it was something like building a Hostess Ho-Ho from the inside out. The homemade conversion was a success as far as the length was concerned, but the upper surface of the nose turned out rather more bulbous than I intended and did not have the proper degree of downward slope seen on late versions of the F-111B and so crucial to carrier-borne aircraft. I decided to make the best of it, using multiple grades of sandpaper and sanding sticks until the nose had no visible seams and was absolutely smooth.

Next I painted the cockpit (escape capsule really) and aircrew, after confirming through research that up to the mid-1960’s U.S. Navy flight suits were orange, the transition to dark olive occurring in the late 60’s as a result of the Vietnam War. While Revell engineered the escape capsule to be completely detachable, I wanted a realistic model rather than a toy, so when the time came I cemented it to the fuselage and started the puttying and sanding process all over again.

Since the kit has fully functioning swing wings, I assembled and painted the wings (and all tail surfaces) separately, before cementing the fuselage together, since the movable wings in particular would have been that much more difficult to airbrush if they were already attached to the airframe. I then cemented the top and bottom halves of the fuselage together, sealing in the wings and horizontal tail surfaces. Then I cemented on the escape capsule and puttied and sanded it. Only then did I airbrush the fuselage, cementing on the fully painted vertical tail only after the paint on the fuselage was dry. Smaller parts such as the engine exhausts, blade antennas and ventral strakes were added last. For the wing-mounted missiles, I used four AIM-54 Phoenix missiles taken from the Hasegawa 1/72 aftermarket air-to-air missiles set, together with 1/72 scale pivot pylons for the F-111 (Air Force versions) made by Reskit.  Given that weight was a factor in the F-111B’s demise, it’s interesting that the pivot pylons the Air Force used for the AIM-54 Phoenix missiles were significantly smaller (and probably lighter) that the jumbo-sized pylons the Navy used for the same weapon.

Painting

The F-111B is painted in Gunze Sangyo acrylics. Since I opted to build the Navy version, it is airbrushed in Aircraft Gray H57 over Cool White 1 (a GX color). NOTE: Although until recently I exclusively used Tamiya’s X-1 Gloss White for the undersurfaces of naval aircraft of the 1950’s and ’60’s, I find that Gunze Sangyo’s Cool White airbrushes on more smoothly with less overspray.  Gunze’s standard Gloss White (316) has been unfortunately discontinued, and although I have a small stock of it, Gunze’s Cool White is brighter. The wings, horizontal stabilizers, and vertical tail were painted separately and first, to simplify masking the control surfaces and avoid damaging the kit. The remainder of the airframe was airbrushed only after it was assembled, minus the engine exhausts, the vertical tail, and the anti-glare panel on the nose (Tamiya Semi-Gloss Black).  The engine exhausts are airbrushed in AK Interactive Aluminum and Model Master Titanium, the latter paint one of the Model Master buffing metallizers and unfortunately now out of production.  The AIM-54 Phoenix missiles were likewise painted in Gunze’s Cool White.

Markings

Since I wanted the F-111B to appear in the markings it might have borne had it entered fleet service, I used an aftermarket set for the Vought F-8 Crusader by Xtradecal, Sheet No. X72160. This was an excellent choice, since the quality of Xtradecal markings is, in a word, superb. They are both thin and strong, and lay down on the surface of the model rather easily in most cases. Decal solvent tames them with minimal effort. Their best feature may be that for markings like the word “NAVY” the spaces between the letters are crystal clear and have no tendency to silver or trap air at all.

Conclusion

This is a kit of simple construction that I value for its historical significance. The challenge as well as the downside is that it takes quite a bit of effort to create a reasonably accurate Navy version from Revell’s F-111 kit, but the raw material is there, although my own attempt had admittedly mixed results. The F-111B may not have been an ideal naval interceptor, but in some respects it pointed the way to factors that would exert growing influence over military procurement processes in decades to come. It is a notable part of aviation history, in part because it appeared at a pivotal moment of the Cold War.

References

• Naval Fighters No.41: Grumman F-111B Swing Wing by Tommy Thomason; Copyright 1998 by Steve Ginter, Simi Valley, California.
• General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark by Peter Davies; Air Vanguard No. 10, Copyright 2013 Opsrey Publishing, Oxford.
• “Was the Navy’s F-111 Really That Bad?” by Robert Bernier, Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine, September 2018.