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About When Pigs Flew: The TFX Affair
President John F. Kennedy’s last year in office was dominated by the TFX affair. The award of the immense fighter contract to General Dynamics and the subsequent Senate investigation preoccupied the national media until JFK’s untimely death. After that: silence. Lyndon Johnson and Senator John McClellan agreed to limit the political exposure. But the bitter attacks on the resulting F-111 aircraft continued until Robert McNamara left office in 1968. For sixty years the prevalent story has been that Secretary of Defense McNamara imposed his will on the military with the TFX due to an obsession with “commonality,” or standardization of aircraft for both Air Force and Navy. In fact, the TFX became McNamara’s first Vietnam – a boondoggle from which he would not retreat regardless of expert opinion or fatal accidents. This book lifts the veil from McNamara’s intransigence. From the beginning, the Kennedy administration told him that the contract, expected to be the biggest in military history, must go to General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas. The Kennedy brothers had political debts to pay, and the new owner of the conglomerate, Henry Crown of Chicago, called them in, assisted by his Texan cohorts. And they had the goods on Kennedy. It was a deal the president could not refuse. The TFX (F-111) contract saved General Dynamics and its well-connected owners from bankruptcy. It rescued the economy of Fort Worth, a Democratic citadel then teetering at an economic abyss. It let President Kennedy off the hook with his supporters, but he paid an immense political price for it. For McNamara, who reluctantly agreed to take the heat, the TFX became an albatross he could not shake, much as he could not escape the Vietnam miasma. The TFX decision, which overrode four successive competitions, created a firestorm of resentment and bitterness in the military, especially in the U.S. Navy, which was saddled with a useless aircraft until McNamara left office. The competitor with the better and cheaper product, Boeing, had to hold its tongue. The debacle cost the taxpayers billions, and some pilots their lives. It culminated with a humiliating first combat deployment to Thailand in 1968. Why did the Kennedys have no choice but to give the contract to Fort Worth? How did McNamara cook up his justification? Was the plane, known as the Pig, really a "Dog?" And why did Senator McClellan launch the longest, most ferocious, most unforgiving investigation in Senate history, only to suddenly relent after 22 November 1963? How did the president’s death suddenly freeze the investigation, just before it stood to take down top figures in the administration?
