Jetstar - I apologize if I came off wrong on the F-110. I loved flying the F-14 with those engines, it brought out the plane's full potential and it was a huge power and reliability increase for the jet.
I was strafing one day and the gun exploded (gun parts went through the skin of the plane) and the left engine ate them. Despite damaged blades, that F-110 ran without a hitch, all the way home. It had to be pulled for re-work (lots of blade damage, some big pieces missing, as gun parts tend to be high strength steel)...but I have never seen an engine run with that kind of damage...a great piece of engineering.
But the balance of AB liner cooling air and boundary layer holes in the AB liner was off when the -400 was designed from the -100...AB liner burnthroughs happened too often. Some of them with serious consequences, like when an F-14B, crewed by Bill Daisley and Fred Dillingham, experienced a burnthrough on 15 March, 1993, while flying at 10,000' and 800+ knots (about 1.4 IMN). The AB flame, uncontained by the liner or engine casing, cut through the starboard stabilizer control rod, causing the airplane to pitch full nose down at that speed. The airplane was shredded by the G loading (in excess of -14 Gs when the cockpit came apart) and the debris field was roughly 10 miles in length.
Fred and I had been squadron-mates during Operation Desert Storm and flown in combat together...including some very hazardous tactical reconnaissance on the last day of that conflict as we got down below the oil fire smoke, in the realm of small arms threat and mid-air collisions while imaging high-interest targets. Ironic that his end came on a simple training sortie...
I was strafing one day and the gun exploded (gun parts went through the skin of the plane) and the left engine ate them. Despite damaged blades, that F-110 ran without a hitch, all the way home. It had to be pulled for re-work (lots of blade damage, some big pieces missing, as gun parts tend to be high strength steel)...but I have never seen an engine run with that kind of damage...a great piece of engineering.
But the balance of AB liner cooling air and boundary layer holes in the AB liner was off when the -400 was designed from the -100...AB liner burnthroughs happened too often. Some of them with serious consequences, like when an F-14B, crewed by Bill Daisley and Fred Dillingham, experienced a burnthrough on 15 March, 1993, while flying at 10,000' and 800+ knots (about 1.4 IMN). The AB flame, uncontained by the liner or engine casing, cut through the starboard stabilizer control rod, causing the airplane to pitch full nose down at that speed. The airplane was shredded by the G loading (in excess of -14 Gs when the cockpit came apart) and the debris field was roughly 10 miles in length.
Fred and I had been squadron-mates during Operation Desert Storm and flown in combat together...including some very hazardous tactical reconnaissance on the last day of that conflict as we got down below the oil fire smoke, in the realm of small arms threat and mid-air collisions while imaging high-interest targets. Ironic that his end came on a simple training sortie...
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