Thank you for paying homage to this great bird. I remember watching full AB launches into the night sky over Lakenheath (LN). Some pieces of trivia not mentioned: during the development of the F111, human factors came into being and moved the variable wing control from manual to automatic. As first designed by the engineers, not pilots, to fully deploy the wings for max lift, you pushed the controls forward, to fully sweep, you pulled it back…now, when you control the throttles, which is ingrained in pilots, forward is fast, back is slow — caused a couple of major problems before they automated it.

The ACM kill in DS you mentioned actually had some in theater controversy about it. F111 guys swear it was the first air kill of the war, but that they were rooked because the first kill HAD to go to the F15 guys. (Rumor has it that the 48th also ‘stole’ the forward base designated for an A10 wing)

The F111 lost in El Dorado came from the 48th FW, years later when we hit Lybia again and we lost an F15E *but recovered the crew* that bird was also from the Liberty wing.