I am talking here about the name given to the F-111 jet strike fighter developed by the US air force in the mid 60’s. Interestingly throughout the whole active service life of the plane it had no official name, it was just known as the F-111, however in 1998 when the plane was officially retried from the USAF, it was named Aardvark.
Well that’s sort of true! It was known unofficially as the Aardvark, throughout out its life, but the only member of the F-111 family to have an official name while it was in service was the EF-111 which was called the Raven. It was only when the F-111 was decommissioned in 1998, that the decommissioning documents made the Aardvark name official.
Although the plane has an F number which is typically reserved for fighter jets, it’s not really a good jet to take in to a dog fight. It can carry the standard USAF Vulcan cannon and air to air missiles, these where really only ever carried for defence, the Aardvark is a strike plane at heart.
The Aardvark was developed in response to a request for a multi-purpose strike fighter for both the air force and navy. It was not well suited as a carried based plane, being larger than any of the planes which preceded and followed it, however as a strike fighter for the air force it was a much better option. It served in this role for both the US air force and the Royal Australian Air Force. It also served for a short time as strategic bomber in America’s Strategic Air Command. Its final role in the USAF as an electronic warfare plane, the EF-111A Raven (also known as the ‘spark vark’). The RAAF retired its fleet of Aardvarks in 2010. At the time of retirement from the RAAF the Aardvark had been in service for over 40 years. It was said that the patches on the airframes where older than many of pilots flying the planes!
Although it is now a fairly conventional, twin engine swing
wing design, it should be remembered that it was the first
plane of this sort of design to make it in to the air and
hence become an influential design. Other’s such as the
Panavia Tornado
and Sukhoi SU-27,
followed this design pattern. The design also has some
interesting features. For instance it has a side by side
cockpit design which is unusual for a small plane. It
also uses an escape pod system rather than the normal
ejector seats, where the whole cockpit module is ejected
from the plane.
The Aardvark was popular for air displays for its party
piece ‘dump and burn’. The spectacular, fiery display was
created by dumping fuel through the dump port, which was
right between the two engines, with the afterburners lit!
Not good for fuel economy, but great for showing off!