Around 1970 I was stationed at Nellis AFB, NV and flying the F-111 in The Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron. Mike Wallace showed up and wanted to do a story about the controversal F-111 for CBS News. This was after a wing had folded the wrong way on one killing a friend of mine. After he was greeted by the base VIPs he was turned over to me for briefing. I gave him the same Dog & Pony Show I gave the steady stream of generals coming from the Pentagon to get their trophy ride in the F-111. He wanted to fly at Mach 2.5 I briefed him and suited him up and away we went. I did not take him on one of my pre-planned Upchuck routes that I used for some of the generals from the Pentigon. These consisted of routes that had several steep peaks so that the terrain following radar, flying at 200 feet and Hard Ride at 550 knots would push over at 2-2 1/2 Gs. I found that if I lit the burners at the same time it pushed over, the Upchuck was more likely. My favorite route consisted of approaching the Grand Canyon from the East at a point where it turned from South to West. We would be over flat desert and then suddenly the A/C would be diving for the bottom of the canyon. The route spent a consideable amount of time at the bottom on the canyon with the walls sometimes only a few yards away. Then it would climb up and dive back down when it cleared a bend in the canyon. All the time I sat there with my arms crossed.
Our supersonic area started a Nellis and ran north to just short of an east-west airway. The plane I had was somwhat of a dog and I didn't reach Mach 2.5 until just at the end of our air space and I entered the airway. I saw an airliner approaching from the east about 25 miles away and well below me. I wanted to hurry up and get out of the airway even though I was well above the airliner and no way was he going to catch up with me. I rolled into a 60-70 degree bank to the left and the computer controlled yaw damper did not do its job and I got several quick compressor stalls in the right engine. It sounded like the aircraft was blowing up and vibrated badly. It scared the hell out of Mike (me too) and he was yelling and cussing. I retarded the throttle and the stalls cleared up, no damage done. The commercial pilot reported me to LA Center even though I never got within 25 miles or 5,000 feet of him.
I'll bet Mike never forgot that ride. He asked me once how I felt about flying such an expensive airplane. I told him I never thought about it. Congress buys them and hires me to fly them.
