Lt Crandall recalls a routine mission for
a Lakenheath crew: “We would come in and
find out if we had a range scheduled. If it was
Tain [a weapons range on the Moray Firth in
Scotland] or Rosehearty [near Fraserburgh
in Aberdeenshire], then we would plan a
low-level to end up north. If it was Jurby
[on the Isle of Man], then we might plan
through Wales. We would talk to the weather
guessers to get their best bet on where the
weather was good to get down low and fly.“We would then pull out the 1:500,000
charts and start to plan the low level, making
sure we avoided all the noise sensitive and
restricted areas. This was hard to do as we
had to manually check the co-ordinates and
plot them all on our maps.
“We would ‘CHUM’ [chart updating manual]
the charts to ensure we had the towers and
any other obstructions plotted. We would
take our planning plotters, turning diameters,
pick turn points and practice targets, planan attack, put the distance marks and timing
marks on it, plan the fuel burn and create a
map for our use in the cockpit. There were
some pre-planned routes we could use but we
would often make our own.
“We would then go in and brief up the
mission. We could brief up three different
ranges – on each we would plan our
deliveries and get the appropriate ballistics
planned, wind corrections, etc. Then we’d
step out to the jet. They would drive us to
the appropriate shelter, though there were
jets we could walk to.
“We would then do our pre-flight, get
in and start up. It took a while for the INS
[Inertial Navigation System] to spin up. That
was critical because if the INS dumped it was
harder to fly the low-levels. We would call for
taxi and do the standard departure. We’d get
cleared by the British ATC, though sometimes
we would fly to France or the Netherlands or
[West] Germany to fly a low-level, though not
as often as just staying in the UK.
The missions averaged two-and-a-half
hours or so. We would come back and do
an instrument penetration/radar pattern. If
it was a clear day we’d beat up the pattern
with overheads, land, taxi in and debrief. It
was nice that the F model had the video as
we could review the radar and Pave Tack
info during the debrief.”
Although much of the training for both
the nuclear and conventional missions
was carried out in the UK, the 48th TFW
deployed regularly to elsewhere in Europe,
North Africa and the Middle East, on
exchange visits and for weapons practice.
Capt Jimenez recalls two of the regular
venues visited by the 48th.
“We had two semi-annual deployments a
year for concentrated weapons training. One
was to I ̇ncirlik, Turkey, and the other was
to Zaragoza, Spain. We couldn’t drop live
ordnance in Spain, but we dropped plenty
of inert heavyweight bombs on Bardenas
Reales range [in northeast Spain].
“Our redeployment sortie from Zaragoza
in the fall of 1985 was pretty memorable. In
those days there was still a USAF F-16 wing
at Torrejón [near Madrid]. They asked us if
we could support them during one of their
exercises. We said we were redeploying
back to the UK but could ‘hit’ them on the
way.” This impressed the resident unit, as its
F-16 Fighting Falcons would have needed
a tanker to fly to the UK let alone perform a
low-level attack as part of a flight that didn’t
include air-to-air refuelling.
The simulated attack was performed and
the F-111s departed Spain at high speed,
with the F-16s in hot pursuit. This continued
out into the Atlantic, at which point the
defenders turned back due to lack of fuel,
and the F-111s slowed down, gained height
and flew north to Lakenheath.MAINTENANCE ISSUES
Perhaps the F-111’s weak point was
maintenance, which was both costly and
difficult. There was also a serious shortage of50 Aviation News incorporating Jets July 2018A pair of Lakenheath-based F-111Fs on final approach to their home station. Key CollectionCarrying four Mk.84 laser-guided bombs, and equipped with an AN-AVQ-26 Pave Tack laser
target designator, this F-111F belonging to the 493rd TFS on a live firing practice mission in
July 1982. USAF ArchivesF-111F 70-2375 of the 493rd TFS beginning its take-off roll from Lakenheath’s runway 24 in
October 1986. This training mission was to Garvey Island off the north coast of Scotland – the
only place in the UK where inert LGBs could be dropped, in this case a GBU-12D/B. Also note
the North African Campaign ribbon on the tail, which was applied to all 48th TFW aircraft after
the Libya raid. Jim Rotramel48-53_usaf_f111DC.mfDC.mf.indd 50 06/06/2018 11:19