Crash Landing Can't Take Top Gun's Breath Away

The Age

Thursday July 20, 2006

BRENDAN NICHOLSON, DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT

THE bomber crewmen who made a spectacular belly-landing in an ageing F-111 jet said they were more nervous facing the media yesterday than they were during their dangerous wheels-up return to earth.

The pilot, Flying Officer Peter Komar, 29, and navigator Flight Lieutenant Luke Warner, 32, landed their Royal Australian Air Force jet safely at Amberley air base west of Brisbane on Tuesday after a wheel fell off during take-off.

Flying Officer Komar has only 70 hours' flying experience and graduated from the F-111 training course only a fortnight ago. Most of his jet flying time was in a Hawk trainer.

He said he and Flight-Lieutenant Warner knew they had a serious problem after personnel in the control tower told them the wheel had separated from the aircraft and hurtled down the runway.

"It was serious because it basically meant putting the jet back on the ground in a way that I guess essentially it's not designed to do," Flying Officer Komar said.

"I guess the potential for things to go wrong was reasonably high."

They circled for three hours to burn off their full load of fuel.

While experienced RAAF pilots tried out landing scenarios on an F-111 simulator, the two crewmen aboard the bomber cracked jokes.

The decision was made to come in low and slow with an arrester hook extended to catch a cable stretched across the runway, a technique similar to that used by aircraft landing on aircraft carriers.

That worked perfectly - cutting the aircraft's speed from 139 knots to nothing in barely a second - and the two walked away unharmed, despite what they describe as a "pretty solid jolt".

With their hearts racing, the pair leapt from the jet as it came to rest in a shower of sparks. Fire engines blasted it with foam to stop it from catching fire.

The aircraft suffered only superficial damage and almost certainly can be repaired. But the pilot admitted that it could have blown up.

"I guess there is a real risk of fire when you're scraping along the ground with a whole bunch of sparks and whatnot coming out of the bottom of the jet."

Not surprisingly, the more experienced navigator was first out of the aircraft.

The pilot stayed in the cockpit for a few extra seconds to shut the engines down.

He was, he said, "pretty quick". Both men will be back in the air next week. "The sooner the better."

All 26 of the RAAF's F-111s have been grounded until an investigation reveals why the wheel fell off.

© 2006 The Age

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