Within 33 hours after they left Nellis AFB, they were in combat 55 miles (88 km) northwest of Hanoi, an impressive performance on any deployment effort. The F-111As continued to fight the air war with the 429th and 430th TFS, 474th TFW, based at Takhli, Thailand. They were the major factor in night interdiction strikes. They attacked targets in Laos in the middle of the monsoon season, and struck the North in weather that grounded other aircraft. Four of them could carry the bomb load of 20 Phantoms, so that a two-plane element could be a strike force. And they went in alone; no Iron Hand or chaff flights preceded them, no EC-121s vectored them, and no tankers refueled them.

They had problems with the terrain-following and attack radar sets, and with the internal navigation and weapons release systems. Brakes, wheels and landing gear struts were in critical supply. The engine inlets caused powerplant problems occasionally.

The primary use made of the 'Aardvark' was to fly an all-weather mission into a high-threat area. They attacked at low level, using their terrain-following radars, and dropped accurately. They also flew some support sorties for the B-52 raids, going in just ahead of the main force to suppress the defenses and kill the SAM sites.

Between October 1972, and March 1973, they flew almost 4,o00 combat sorties with one of the lowest loss rates—0.15 per cent—ever to show in air combat statistics. Six aircraft were lost during the period, a relatively high absolute loss in terms of the total F111A force. The sortie loss rate was extremely low and proved, statistically, what the F-111 pilots had been saying right along it: was one hell of a fine airplane.