How many aircrew flew aussie F-111s?
The F-111C Aircrew Honour Roll has 448 names on the list, but when you take into account some duplicates; like the three names appearing on three courses (Chris Lake, John Emery and Al Curr), the 29 aircrew who doubled up in the early 68-73 years, the 15 aircrew who did two 6SQN OPCONs (2nd tourists did full OPCONs until No 23 CSE, thence F-111C Refresher Courses) and the seven pig NAVs who became pig PLTs (Steve Clarke, Leigh Beaman, Tiger Meadows, Phil Townshend, Teddy Blair, Marty Huet and Shannon Kennedy)
The 394 F-111C aircrew list comprises:
- 204 PLT – Pilots
- 153 NAV – Navigators
- 21 ACO – Air Combat Officers
- 13 WSO – Weapons System Officer (US)
- 2 AEO – Air Electronics Officer
- 1 Flight Test Engineer (Aircraft Research Laboratory)
Not all were aussies of course: the 394 also includes the USAF yanks and RAF poms who came to ‘Oz’ on exchange:
- 11 USAF Pilots
- 10 USAF WSOs
- 8 RAF Pilots and
- 8 RAF Navigators
6SQN F-111C/G Operational Conversion Courses (OPCON)
… and for the purists amongst you, 6SQN graduated 178 Pilots, 132 Navigators, 21 Air Combat Officers, three USAF WSOs (the first seven USAFEX WSOs were F-111 qualified, the last three came from F-15E Strike Eagles) and two AEOs, totalling 336 aircrew
Between 13 Aug 73 and 30 May 08 over a span of 34.8 years, 6SQN conducted 64 OPCONs:
- #1-62 CSE, 46A & 49A CSE
- Graduated 336/389 F-111C/G aircrew
- Graduation rate of 86.4%
- Average 9.7 aircrew @ year