Gordon Farewells a Very Old Friend

I said farewell to a very old and very dear friend yesterday.  It was quite an emotional journey as I met with many of my old comrades, some I hadn’t seen for thirty years or more.  We had all came together one more time to pay our respects.  We remembered the good times and our adventures together, which for me was from my late teens and through my 20s.  A period where we all  felt we could conquer the world together.  And since parting ways in the 80s my friend's path and mine crossed often and with a great sense of pride and achievement I admired the successes that my friend had experienced. 

But nothing remains invincible or can remain forever and it was time to meet one last time for one last airshow and say farewell to the astounding F-111 Strike Aircraft.

This amazing aircraft had served Australia as a front line bomber for 37 years and on the 3 December it was time to retire.

 

In my late teens I was posted with the RAAF to work on the F-111 as a Radio Technician.  The F-111 was almost new then, the RAAF having owned them for only two years.  It was a job that was to last 10 years and span three different units at RAAF Base Amberley.  It was and remains the most complex aircraft the RAAF had ever owned.  The most challenging technical job a RAAF technician could be assigned to undertake was the maintenance of the F-111.

Before I had turned 20 I was in the realm of technology and sophistication that was only ever dreamed of in science fiction movies.  I became a specialist on Terrain Following Radar systems, that allowed the aircraft to skim 200 feet above the ground at almost the speed of sound and where to get it wrong could mean catastrophic results for both aircraft and crew.  There were Attack Radar Systems for locating targets; Radar Warning Systems that alerted the crew to the presence of enemy radars on land, sea and air; Radar and Communication Jamming Systems, which confused enemy radars trying to track the aircraft. And then there was the Pavetack System that allowed the aircraft to place laser guided bombs dropped from over 10 Kms away to within less than a metre of the target.  

We shared adventures together that even today seem like an amazing dream.   We travelled interstate, all around Australia, and then overseas many times a year.  Places went by in a blur, passports were filled and replaced and I filled two World Health Organisation booklets with records of inoculations. 

As a young Corporal Radio Technician I was privileged to fly in one, simply because I had boasted to a pilot that “Because I could fix the navigation and radar systems, then of course I could navigate one”.   I didn’t realise then that I was getting an opportunity to do something that fewer than 800 Australians would ever experience.

Holding centre stage was my favourite old friend A8-148, an aircraft I had fixed many times and flown in once. It had taken me from down low in the valleys in Queensland and to the very edge of space and back.  From a standing start to the speed of sound and beyond. 

But now it was time to say goodbye.  To listen to the speeches, to shed a tear, and reflect on our younger years.

Then the Piper played and it was all but a distant memory.

Thanks for the memories, thanks for the thunder and thanks for letting me believe I could conquer the world.

Farewell my friend.