Description:
The first combat deployment of the F-111A on 17 Mar 68, when Detachment 1 of the 428th TFS deployed to Ta Khli, Thailand from Nellis. the name of the operational phase (combat phase) was operation combat lancer, a six month test of the low-level (terrain-following), all-weather, deep interdiction mission which the F-111A was expected to excel at. A prior intensive training phase was carried out at Nellis prior to deployment in Thailand. This phase was called (operation) Harvest Reaper. Both ops were under the command of Col. Ivan Dethman, USAF, a highly professional, no-nonsense career Air Force officer. the F-111A was plaqued with a recurring mechanical problem in the flight-controls which was to cause the loss of three of these aircraft in South Ease Asia and two more form Nellis during the six-month period of Combat Lancer. As a result of thews losses, and the large amount of negative publicity written about controversial aspects of the TFX contract award and subsequent cost-overruns, Combat Lancer has been characterized as a disaster" by journalists who have written about the F-111A's first combat assignment. Their negativity should have been reserved for the sub-contractor who supplied the defective part to General Dynamics, for when the airplane flew all the way to the target, it aquitted itself perfectly...that is to say the 51 missions which were performed against difficult targets in North Vietnam were virtually all successes, proving both the airplane and the mission profile possible. In the painting, we see an F-111A pulling away from a target in a cave (on the side of a karst) which was located at the confluence of two rivers near Vinh, North vietnam. This target was too heavily defended to be approachable prior to the aerial of the terrain following F-111A's of the 428th TFS. Detachment CO, Col. Dethman was in the left seat on this particular mission on the 13th of April 1968. A large secondary explosion from within the cave, as a result of a direct hit on this target resulted in a spectacular shock waves which catapulted the strike aircraft vertically five or six thousand feet."
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