Using air transportation to transport organs for transplant is not out of the ordinary. What is important is to use a supersonic fighter-bomber for that task. That’s what happened in 1989, when the United States Air Force carried a heart aboard an F-111A. The reason? There was no other option.
He General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark It was one of the most important fighter aircraft of its time. Retired in 1998, it was used since its entry into service in 1967 as a strategic bomber and for reconnaissance tasks thanks to its supersonic speed of 2,655 km/h (or Match 2.5). The benefits of the F-111 were to fly low and at very high speed to bomb positions behind enemy lines. It was used briefly in Vietnam (with a disastrous result), but also in other modern wars with better versions than the original. However, on Valentine’s Day 1989 his task was more complicated and, above all, more laudable.
One of the Air Force’s F-111As, nicknamed Dark Vark due to its black fuselage, it fulfilled one of its most important missions: transporting a heart from Oklahoma to Hartford, Connecticut, to save the life of a 46-year-old man. The reason for using a supersonic fighter-bomber, whose operational cost per hour is exorbitant, was because there was no other option. There was no other plane, public or private, capable of transporting the heart in four hours without damage. Any private plane would have made the journey in 3.5 hours, which, adding to the time the heart already had outside the donor’s body, was impossible.
F-111A: the only aircraft on hand capable of arriving on time
Given the situation, doctors at the hospital asked for help from the Air Force, which sent two FB-111As and a refueling tanker to Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma. Everything went as planned because both fighters had a training flight scheduled to Virginia, so the trip to Oklahoma did not involve deviating much from their route.
Thus, at three in the afternoon an FB-111A with the heart on board from Oklahoma took off and successfully landed at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, approximately half an hour from Hartford Hospital, two hours later. The fighter flew an average speed of about 1,126 km per hour (not far from the speed of sound at sea level). The fighter had to be refueled mid-flight by a tanker plane.
The result of this mission? a complete success. The heart arrived safely, and its recipient, Richard Reinhardt, underwent successful transplant surgery.