Tests & Testimony

Six strange-looking aircraft will wheel over Takhli Air Force Base in Thailand early this week, cock their delta-shaped wings forward like alighting eagles, then touch down with needle-nosed insouciance among the warplanes that almost daily raid North Viet Nam. They are the first combat-bound models of the controversial F-111 swing-wing fighter-bomber (originally, the TFX), contracted for six years ago under Robert McNamara to serve both the Air Force and the Navy. Takhli's new planes will be F-111 As, the Air Force model, which will be tested in bombing runs over North Viet Nam.

Meanwhile, the Navy brass is more than ever dissatisfied with its own ver sion, the F-111B. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee recently, Admirals Thomas Moorer, chief of naval operations, and Thomas Connolly, his deputy for air, maintained that the plane is still too. heavy and thus ineffective for carrier duty. Connolly blurted: "There isn't enough power in all Christendom to make that airplane what we want!" That jolted Navy Secretary Paul Ignatius, who presently seems to prefer the F-111B over any "paper airplane" his admirals might want to add to the naval aviary. Ignatius produced a secret study written by Connolly only last year, which praised the F-111B power plant to the skies. That set the admirals aground for a while--but left the future of the F-111 B up in the air.

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