About Us

My name is David de Botton. I am an automotive engineer by trade, working primarily on Japanese motorcycles most of my life. Australia waited a long time to get our F-111C aircraft.

The opportunity to see the aircraft was difficult as the base was located interstate. I decided to build a large1 radio-controlled flying model with fully functional landing gear & swing wing capability. The aircraft being in active service with our RAAF, made the details needed near impossible to obtain.

My determination to build this model resulted in years of emails, mostly to the USA, and one day my efforts were rewarded. I learned how to create the aircraft in 3D CAD, and that’s as far as I got. Along the way, I became an F-111 historian. It was hard at first to be a civilian in a very technical military world. A daunting amount of historical records were made available to me over many years. At first, I thought it impossible to manage the volume of material. It didn’t take long before I was processing files of every kind and asking veterans to proofread the pages created.

Over a number of years, I purchased every book on the F-111 and became fascinated by not only the aircraft’s history but also the many thousands of men & women who made it a very remarkable aircraft. All publishers condense the history into a commercial product and created some really great books. For years this left me asking many questions that are all now answered in this digital archive. With zero qualifications on avionics & weapons I deliberately kept away from both.

I present to you my F-111 historical archives that kept me busy from 1998 to 2023.