Sheet:

Twobobs 48-067: F-111A Aardvark

Units: See review

Price

$

Reviewer:

Scott Van Aken

As some of you may know, during the Vietnam War, the USAF sent a detachment of  6 early F-111A into Thailand to see how they would cope with combat. This was done in March of  1968 when the aircraft themselves were less than a year old. This deployment was known as Combat Lancer and all of the aircraft were from Nellis AFB. Two aircraft were quickly lost; one due to a mechanical failure and the other unknown. Two replacement aircraft were flown in.  After several dozen successful missions, a third aircraft was lost (probably due to a mechanical failure like the first). This caused a grounding of the fleet and the termination of Combat Lancer a month after the aircraft had arrived in theater. Despite the losses, much was learned and the general feeling was one of having an aircraft that could be successfully flown at night and in bad weather into enemy territory, complete the mission with accuracy and return home.

This sheet covers all of the aircraft that were assigned to the Combat Lancer program. If you look at the sheet, you'll realize that there really was little in the way of special markings for these aircraft, so you may well want to consider this to be an F-111A data sheet with the Combat Lancer markings tossed in!

Though the instructions only mention the Academy 1/48 F-111A, there is also one done by Monogram that should work just as well with these decals.

Review sheet courtesy of my pal, Don Logan. Thanks, Don!

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