Two new engines

The fact that two new engines were installed on the crashed FB-111A just one day before the accident receives almost no mention in the mishap report. They appear in a lengthy list that records the date in which parts of the plane were last overhauled. The engines are dated January 29, 1981 with the simple notation "NOT OVERHAULED SINCE NEW".

The brand new Pratt & Witney TF-30-P7 engines, manufactured for General Dynamics, were ruled out as a cause from the earliest moments of the investigation. As a result, and this remains a worrying detail, the engine manufacturers were not part of the recovery and investigation. Both engines.survived the crash, although they were compacted, according to the report to one-quarter their size. When researcher Jack Goterch requested further information for this article, he received the following reply by email from the manufacturer: "The engine was exonerated as a cause of the crash therefore Pratt & Whitney did not participate in the accident investigation." The engines, used only once, cost Uncle Sam $1,735,000, roughly 17% of the total cost of the jet bomber.

Although no evidence indicates any fault in the engines at Portsmouth, their immediate exoneration seems odd in light of the poor track record of the FB-111A. According to amateur web sites fb-111a.net and F-111.net, at least 13 or 14 of the 76 bombers manufactured crashed during routine flights. Accidents, many fatal, occurred in Arizona, Virginia, Texas, Nevada, and Canada with three crashes in Maine and four in Vermont.

"The FB-111A was essentially a project that never lived up to its hopes," says retired Portsmouth Herald editor John Whiteman.

He should know. Whiteman is one of the few civilians who got to see the complex swing-wing bomber perform from the inside. Prior to the 1981 crash, Whiteman took a 3.5-hour ride in a bomber out of Pease AFB. Equipped with an advanced terrain mapping system, the fighter was able to travel below conventional radar at 100 feet above ground. Cruising at 565 mph, the FB-111A could reach speeds of 1,600 mph at 36,000 feet and travel 4,500 miles between fill-ups.

Tapping his personal contacts at Pease in 1981, Whiteman was the first reporter to reveal that the crashed jet bomber was fitted with new engines. Three months later, when the USAF announced the findings of its investigation, Whiteman reported that Carellas and Reppe had been "flight-testing two newly fitted jet engines" when the crash occurred. He also released comments from the legal portion of the report that are not available to the public even today.

Rolling thunder review

The JAG investigative board, as reported by Whiteman in April 1981, did not find pilot Peter Carellas legally responsible. In fact, the board "didn’t pinpoint any cause for the crash," according to the Portsmouth Herald. Carellas testified that the plane exhibited "unusual gyrations".

"I was screaming into my mask, very loudly," Carellas told investigators. "I realized we were coming down." These words were not received by traffic controllers at Pease or by the Boston Air Traffic group located in Nashua, neither of which was aware of the crash until it was reported by civilian observers. Nor does Carellas’ cry for help appear in the transcript in the official mishap report, now in the public domain.

The pilot also told the legal board that the aircraft began "snapping motions in one direction." The activity stopped and appeared to recover, he testified, but the rolling continued. He corrected it by applying right rudder, but was losing altitude. When the plane hit 4,000 feet, unable to regain control and with only seconds to impact, Carellas signaled Reppe to pull the handle that detonated the escaped module.

Researcher Jack Goterch, who spent over a year studying the 1981 crash for this article, has located the capsule (tail #80263) that catapulted Carellas and Reppe to safety. The capsule sits – its story forgotten -- in the vast storage area of The National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton Ohio. Goterch has suggested that it might be shipped back to Portsmouth for exhibition, and as a reminder of the day the city dodged a deadly bullet.

Goterch says he is still trying to put the pieces together. After studying news reports, official statements, and eyewitness accounts, he keeps coming back to the testimony of John Bertrand, who watched the aircraft looping in the sky directly above when he was a boy. Bertrand said he was "shocked to see the plane fly overhead, turn away toward the river, and then come back to crash near his home.

"The plane itself made the loop," Gorterch suggests, "because of the unscheduled roll to port. That is, it turned itself to the left – more than once. I’ve come to believe that the ailerons that turn the plane were malfunctioning, as they had been throughout the one hour flight. I'd bet my last dollar the problem was in the controls, not the engine – or the pilot."

Copyright © 2008 by J. Dennis Robinson with Jack Goterch. All rights reserved.

Robinson is the owner of the popular web site SeacoastNH.com. His latest book is Strawbery Banke: A Seacoast Museum 400 Years in the Making.