World: Another of Our Aircraft Is Missing

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Its adjustable wings retracted into attack position, a camouflage-mottled F-111, nee the TFX, last week was highballing across Thailand at treetop level on its way to a bombing mission in North Viet Nam's panhandle. Suddenly, something went wrong, and the U.S.'s most advanced warplane crashed somewhere in the dense jungle of Thailand or western Laos. It was the third F-111 crash since a squadron of six of the $6,000,000 swing-wings made their combat debut in Viet Nam less than a month ago.

The crash raised a new storm of scan dal over what is already the most controversial warplane ever built. After the first two crashes, both of which occurred in the first week of combat, the Air Force grounded the F-111. Though it failed to find the first plane, the Air Force did recover the wreckage of the second. After sifting through the twisted parts, its investigators declared that the cause of the crash was a $1 tube of sealant that had been left behind, apparently by a careless mechanic. Somehow, it had worked its way into the automatic flight mechanism, jamming the flight controls.

Concluding that the plane was basically sound, the Air Force ordered the F-111s back into action on April 12, replacing the downed planes with two fresh ones. For nearly two weeks they flew some dozen missions, mostly at night over North Viet Nam, until the third plane went down. Mystified by the malfunctions, the Air Force was at a loss to say what was bugging the enormously complicated fighting machine, which carries three tons of electronic gear. After withholding the surviving F-111s from action for a few days, it sent them once again into combat. This time it intends to keep them under radar surveillance at all times so that it will know at least where—if not why—they go down.