The cockpit

J.C Hall was involved in the FB at Pease and Plattsburgh AFB from 1973 until 1975. He provides us with the following infos on the FB flight gear:"At that time, we were limited to gold goggles and eyepatches for flash blindness gear. As I remember, the operational procedure was to close the aircraft's flash curtains when entering ennemy territory. Then the pilot was supposed to wear an eyepatch to save one eye. I'm pretty hazy on this, but I think we were both supposed to wear the gold goggles as well. I did not see the electronic flash goggles until much later. I saw the first prototypes at Sandia Labs in about 1975. As explained to us, Sandia had discovered how to use piezioelectric crystals as polarizing devices. They demonstrated them by putting a flash camera light against a Colonel's face and firing it!Never saw a birdstrike helmet but the birdstrike program stemmed from the use of an optical glass cockpit with gold impregnation. This was common to all F-111 models initially. Purpose was two-fold (depending upon who you talked to). First was to cut down on the radar signature by cutting reflections from all the metallic right angles in the cockpit. The second was supposedly to reflect some of the nuke energy (not very likely). Similar canopy material is used on the EA-6B to provide some radiation protection to the crew when the jamming pods are on.The worst two birdstrikes that I heard of were TAC F-111s. One from Mountain Home was caused by hitting and eagle. It destroyed the radome and the pitot swung back and shattered half the canopy. I think it was pilot side. They managed to recover the aircraft, but the front end was a flat plate with a spaghetti-tangle of electronics cabling hanging down. The second incident was at Cannon AFB where they had a windscreen shattered (WSO side). They got the aircraft slowed down but they had such horrible airframe vibration that they had to eject. Turned out the aircraft was fine. The vibration that they felt was vibration of their bones. The buffeting of the airflow was hitting the natural harmonics of their bones. They were vibrating from the inside out! A birdstrike helmet wouldn't have done much for either case.If you look beyond flight gear on the FB, the seat cushion has a ton of stories associated with it. Also, the survival gear behind the seat was a real issue in one Plattsburgh ejection. The aircrew came down in a raging snowstorm in Vermont mountains. The release pin was jammed and they couldn't get to the parkas, etc... They would probably have frozen to death (we flew in a shirtsleeve environment) if there had been a second aircraft involved in the mid-air. That crew got into their gear and built a fire to keep them all alive until rescue.In my era, no helmet decoration was allowed. They were the plain white with dual visors. That was before the custom-fit helmets. The fit was determined by what pads were inserted. Comfort sucked but the aircraft pressurization was very good. Everyone flew with the mask dangling."

Note: The information presented on this page were taken from an "OJT Instructor Guide". This handbook was developed by the 436th Strategic Training Squadron / OL-PL for FB-111A maintainers. It was conceived as a training aid and had the advantage of having a lot of general infos in one book. Its only purpose was to give quick reference, as far as systems, operations, functions, etc... The pressures, readings and limitations were subject to change, and were used only to provide general parameters.