Last of flying F-4 Phantoms

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Thread Killer.

Cool! Where is that?

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No baby we aint

I'm guessing Greece.

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Release the Kraken

Yes, they're Greek.

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Thread Killer.

Thanks for sharing this. My dad worked at the St. Louis McDonald-Douglas plant in the early-to-mid 1960's.
His job title was "precision sheet metal worker" and he got to do some of the hands-on-work assembling the F4's and the Mercury space capsules for NASA.
Those were some VERY exciting times to be in the aerospace industry.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

Thanks for sharing……and the memories….

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"Your other right........."

From sometime in 1967 at Chu Lai. For me it was one heck of a bird. Standing directly behind the plane, there was silence. The engines were counter-rotating and cancelled each other. I was told that coming in low and fast the VC never knew what hit them until the plane roared past. I worked on everything in the nose of the plane. The Navy classified it as an Aviation Fire Control Technician.

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A good friend of mine thru my teen years achieved a goal I could only dream about. He wound up a Marine Captain and flew F4's in the Viet Nam era. He told me the first time they launched him off a carrier deck he almost crapped his suit. I assume it was in an F4.

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SOS USA

Quite a crowd to watch! I think there are some others still flying them. Iran comes to mind.

I noticed these F4's didn't leave a black trail of smoke coming
out of the engines. Did they modify the engines?

I believe Iran is still flying F 4s as well.

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No baby we aint

My step-dad

Sadly I have no pictures of myself with the F-4's I worked on as a weapons mechanic in the 349th MMS......Ben

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Cogito, ergo BOOM!...

I got to FIGHTER SQUADRON 202 at NAS DALLAS 5 months after they got rid of the last F-4s in the NAVY and got F-14s. that was March 1988

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V/r,
Markham

There were many great aircraft flying in the Vietnam War but the two real work horses, in my mind, at least, were the UH-1 and the F-4.

I got to NAS Dallas in 1992 (on the "other side"). It was all Tom Cats for you guys then.

I thought maybe South Korea had some too but it seems they just retired them weeks ago. Maybe Turkey has some?

‘There won’t be another like it’: South Korean F-4 Phantom IIs drop final bombs before retirement | Stars and Stripes

As a grunt, I had two memorable experiences with Phantoms. In the Dominican Republic in 1965 the Dominican Air Force sent two Vampire jets over our territory. The Vampires were immediately joined by four Phantoms,one at the rear of each Vampire and one at the wingtip. The six aircraft apparently reached a meeting of the minds and headed out of our AOR. The other story I will save for later.

I was stationed out of Danang, RVN and never knew a moment when either an F4 or Huey were in the air. It didn't dawn on me until I got home and after a few days of feeling like something was missing in my life heard an incoming Huey working for LifeFlight go nearby to the local hospital...It was much more Huey's than F4's but still a constant racket which probably allowed us to sleep at night. We had a Marine Corp's helicopter base directly across the road from our main base of operations which used to be a large Naval hospital. Our main gripe with their operations was that whenever Charlie decided to mortar or rocket the Marines we caught their short rounds. At the time I was there the USS Sanctuary was anchored out in the harbor, it took the place of the out of date Naval Hospital we now occupied. It was kept busy with life flights, Navy security was in the same building when I worked at Harbormaster, most of the time they were quiet, one day there was a bustle of activity and guys were running out the doors to our observation deck. I went out to see what the fuss was and there was a flight of medivac choppers dropping off wounded and one bird was coming in smoking, the pilot got right up to the Sanctuary, clearly in distress from all the smoke. We could see wounded guys being dropped followed by guys in helmets, then the pilot swung the bird out and away from the ship so he could ditch in the water when Boom, she went up in the fireball. Most heroic thing I ever saw.

I was climbing out of An Loc with a brand new Peter Pilot. When ever we went anywhere we had to call the appropriate Arty center to avoid flying through a GT line or an air strike. The FNG had been doing pretty well so i quit monitoring him when he made his call coming out of An Loc. At about 500' here comes an F-4 right at us, pulling out of a napalm run. It was close. Then I saw his wingman diving towards the flames that just erupted on the ground in front of us. I rolled that D model Huey hard right and headed for the trees. Once we were safely away from the strike I asked the guy what Arty said. He says there was an airstrike at coordinates blah blah blah. I said yea, that was it. That was the closest I ever want to see the belly of an F-4. I could have counted the rivets on that thing. I have no idea if he saw us. I'm sure it was pretty busy in their cockpit.

I still loved those Phantoms.

I remember back in the 70s the Oregon Air Gaurd was flying them. My grandparents lived in a houseboat on the Columbia River. When I heard them coming down the river, I would drop whatever I was doing and run outside to watch. Pretty cool for a 7-8 year old kid to see.

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The best I can with what I got

If memory serves, and don't hold me to this, I seem to recall the "B" release J79 resolved the issue...to a degree.
The MDF4 was a no nonsense aircraft and could take a lot of triple A up her skirt and still back aboard deck.

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Never fly the "A" model

Your dad likely worked alongside my mom's uncle. He worked in St. Louis starting in the 60's, ended up being transferred out west, if i remember correctly. Coincidentally, his father lived close to the Illinois river in a town named Meredosia. During the 70's and 80's the family and i spent many weekends there for fishing and camping...we would see and hear the Phantoms (from ANG in Springfield) flying relatively low above the river or Lake Meredosia. Watching them and hearing the sonic booms gave me goosebumps.

Very cool to watch, especially for kids. I was in my early teens, and a military aircraft enthusiast back then.

If you go to time 2:22 you will see some smoke kick in, but nothing like you see in films from Vietnam. It is likely that at that time he came out of afterburner. The older J79 variants typically smoke at any throttle setting above flight idle through to minimum afterburner. Smokeless J79s were eventually produced, starting with the -17 variant. Wikipedia states that the Greek aircraft received "smoke reduction systems" what ever that means.

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Release the Kraken

LOL, pretty good chance they worked together. If not then he almost certainly worked with my uncle - Dad's younger brother. Uncle Gail was still working for MD when Boeing bought them.

I also remember when sonic booms were a very regular occurrence in the St. Louis area.

Funny thing, Dad had heart issues over half his life and they ended up giving him a pacemaker/defibrillator when he was 55 years old.

He said the first time it went off he thought it was a sonic boom! He had never been hit by the defibrillator before, but he had heard so many sonic booms that that was the first thing he thought of!

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

Man that brought back memories! I worked on F-4E's and G's at Spangdahlem AFB in Germany. Pneudraulics mechanic. I heard some time ago that the last F-4's we had were turned into target drones. Broke my heart!

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And now they're using F-16s.

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The best I can with what I got

Yes, they had a fleet of F-4s at Tyndall AFB that were used as target drones. They also had several large recovery boats at Tyndall that would fish them out of the Gulf. Sort of the USAF's Navy. I went out out on one of them once, but that was nearly 20 years ago. There was a large drone maintenance facility at Tyndall to keep those elderly F-4s flying. Maybe they use old F-16s as drones today, I don't know.

I once had an employee who flew rear seat in an F-4 in Vietnam. He didn't talk much about it. I guess he did ECM and stuff like that, I never knew any details.

My last duty station in the Air Force was Bergstrom AFB TX, which had RF-4C reconnaissance birds. They were some of the last USAF F-4s flying at the time (89-90). Even then they were called “Texas Lawn Darts”.

I worked two crashes with them while I was there. I did love hearing them take off.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

I was up close and personal with them overseas in '72.

Then they shipped me to Shaw which was infested with them.

Afterburners at night is quite a sight.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

I've always said watching an F4 taking a cat shot at night is about the prettiest picture there is . I worked on EA-6B's but there was another Marine on board flying RF-4's . I can't remember if the R is right , they were photo recon birds . The Midway had a small deck compared to the new super carriers , so if you were up top when an F4 was catted off , it was quite the experience .

I remember them screaming over the Tampa Bay area in the early to mid 70's flying out of MacDill AFB. Still makes me smile.

A good friend of mine flew 105’s then F4s, he much preferred the Thud for some reason.

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John. SWCA #1586

I thought the F-4s at Bergstrom were Wild Weasels. Was at Bergstrom only once before it closed and was converted into being the Austin Airport. That was sometime in the mid-90s.

A very good friend of mine, Brian Craig who passed away a couple years ago was with the USMC RF-4's on the Midway. He would download the film when they got back from "the trail". Unarmed and unafraid.

I got to Spang in '66 assigned to a load crew in the 9th TFS when the Wing was all F-105...Load 'em up, then load 'em down until you can do it in your sleep (which I sometimes did)...A boring job with too much spit and polish for me...

When word got around we would be transitioning to F-4's, I requested cross-training to Weapons Release (same AFSC 462) and was reassigned to the 349th MMS...Much better and more interesting work as I got to analyze and repair the problems that prevented the weapons system from working as it should...I suppose there's nothing more embarrassing for an aircrew than getting up to dogfight altitude, and finding out your trigger doesn't make any noise, and all those missiles and belts of 20MM HE are still hanging on your wings...

After separating at Holloman AFB in 1969 I never saw another F-4 until 2011 when I attended Wings Over Houston...Two dual-control F-4E's were unadvertised attractions that joined the party unannounced...I was standing at the taxiway (Eagle Squadron tickets are worth the money BTW) taking pics of old warbirds when I heard the unmistakable sound of two General Electric J-79's spooling up behind me...I almost broke my neck turning to look behind me, and my heart stopped when I saw not one but two F-4E's approaching on the taxiway...

I can't describe the thrill I felt at seeing 40 year old aircraft that I may have wrenched on still flying and showing off in the air...Both pilots were instructed to observe airshow rules and they only lit one afterburner each for takeoff, but the smoke show and the smell of burned JP-4 brought all the old memories back...Needless to say, it was a great Saturday for me......Ben

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Cogito, ergo BOOM!...

I worked on the flight deck of the Saratoga (CV60) in 1972 in WesPac. I seem to remember that F4's made a loud boom when they went full AB on the cat. My squadron had RA5C's that also used the J79.

Taken while on guard duty at Chu Lai. Our bunker was at the arresting cable shack/bunker on the runway. We were about 50 yards from the main runway. You could sleep through the F4's taking off after awhile. The ground shook but it didn't bother most of us. Oh the fun we had.

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I was at Korat in '72 with some KC-135s. Lots of F-4s and F-105s. I was much more impressed with the -105's afterburner. Run up to power, split second of silence, then BOOM! Somewhere I have pics of both being refueled on my one refueling mission.

You guys that handled the weapons should recognize the little device at the 7 o'clock position of my keychain. The load was dropped somewhere in Afghanistan.

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