The 1950s were a tough time
for the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation.
Demand for their twin engine banshee fighter had dried up
with the end of the Korean War,
and they virtually bankrupted themselves designing its single engine successor,
the Demon, only to then be beaten by the competitors Vought to a U.S.
Navy contract.
It seemed that the problem was speed.
But when McDonnell broke through the sound barrier in 1953,
the US Navy still wasn't interested.
Over the next five years, McDonnell would try again and again
to meet the US Navy's changing requirements.
To no avail.
They just couldn't beat the F8 and the F11.
That was until 1958,
when McDonnell delivered a prototype, twin engine, supersonic,
all-weather, long range fighter, a design the US Navy could not ignore.
Originally named the Satan, perhaps inspired by its difficult development
process, the aircraft was later named after McDonnell’s first successful fighter.
It would go on to become the most produced American jet
fighter in history and a Cold War icon.
It was, of course, the aircraft behind me, the F-4 Phantom 2.
The F-4 Phantom was designed for a new age of warfare.
Rather than nimble aerial dogfighting, the F-4 would use advances
in radar and missile technology to engage enemy aircraft from beyond visual range.
Unusually for a fighter, the aircraft had a crew of two
to cope with the additional workload of all the new equipment.
Though the Phantom had been designed for the US Navy,
F-4s like this one also found their way into British service.
Of course, the back seat could see out of which in the vixen
we couldn't.
So he became more of a partner at those tricky moments.
In a combat situation
you've got two pairs of eyes. In an intercept in the Phantom,
you can basically identify an aircraft over 20 miles away.
And if you knew
what you're up against, then you've won the battle, really?
Some describe the Phantom as a ‘flying brick’, but its unorthodox
design made it versatile.
The phantom size and power gave it a large
carrying capacity of almost 16,000 pounds.
It could take off with the equivalent weight of an entire F-86 Super Sabre -
the US Air Force's favourite fighter at the time.
Well, I think it was basically
the first supersonic aircraft the Navy had had - genuinely supersonic.
That means straight and level. Weighed basically exactly the same as the
the Vixen but vastly more capable, a great gigantic leap into the present.
Probably couldn't turn at altitude as well as the Vixen
but I got it got there quickly.
Very stable, easy to deck-land,
very good weapons carrying capability.
The F-4 was also adaptable. It could serve in air-to-air combat or be modified
for ground attack. On its nine external pylons
the Phantom could carry bombs, rocket pods or air-to-air missiles.
However, it did not have an internal machine gun,
an omission which would come back to haunt the Phantom.
The most distinctive element of the F-4s design were the wings.
The wings are mounted low in the fuselage and swept back at 45 degrees.
In early prototypes,
the angle of the wings was too flat and caused instability in flight.
Redesigning the entire wing, however, would impact the strength of the fuselage.
So engineers found that by tilting the outer part
at a greater angle, they could achieve the same result.
They also added a dogtooth leading edge
for better control at a higher angle of attack.
For a fighter
at the time, the F-4 was massive.
However, it was fitted with two powerful
GEJ79 engines.
So despite the weight of over 27 tons,
the F-4 could reach Mach 2.3 - twice the speed of sound.
A guy took me out
for the first time in the Phantom and we cruised at 300 knots at sea level.
Then he put the aircraft into full burner and being 20 years old
having never experienced anything like it, the kick that you got literally a kick
in the backside from the acceleration of this aircraft was just immense.
It really was something that I will never forget.
I’d never been Mk2 in a phantom and there was rumours that the Phantom couldn't do it.
So after one test flight. take off all the pylons, take off all the external stalls,
what have you. So we came storming right down to sea level supersonic
at about 500 feet, eventually, and brought it back.
Climbed out, said “aircraft is fully serviceable,
thank very much. You can take it away”.
Got a phone call from the engineer saying,
“What the f have you been doing to this aeroplane?”
So I said “why?” and he said “come and have a look at it”.
And I came back and the thing had got so hot all the paint on the leading
edge of the wings had all burnt off and the aircraft need a total respray.
The fuselage
is mostly made of titanium, making it strong and rugged,
while the engines are mounted low and close to maximise its fuel capacity.
Though criticised for its ugliness at first,
this is now a trademark of McDonnell Douglas’
later, fighters.
Having first been designed to land on aircraft carriers, the F-4
Phantom has an arrester hook which is designed to catch
a wire on a ship's deck and bring the aircraft to a quick stop.
This hook was responsible for one of the most remarkable phantom stories
In 1967 over the skies of Vietnam,
F-4 pilot Bob Pardo pushed his stricken wingman’s F-4
by its tail hook for nearly 90 miles
until they could all eject in friendly airspace, saving all their lives.
If the other runway was out of use
because of crosswinds or ice or whatever, we would land into that cable.
And I have to say, you go
instead of going from 0 to 60 quickly, you go from 60 to 0 very quickly.
And it's a case of making sure your teeth are in and you’re not wearing glasses.
Because the stop from 140 odd knots to
nothing is quite intense.
Though the Phantom had been designed for the US Navy,
entering service with them in 1960, US Secretary of Defence Robert
McNamara wanted a unified fighter suitable for all branches of the US military.
He pushed the US Air Force to adopt the Phantom in 1963
and despite their hesitancy they would go on to become its biggest users.
The Navy's F-4Bs and the Air Force’s F-4C’s
would have their first major combat outing during the Vietnam War.
The pilots were in for a rude awakening.
The US strategy in Vietnam was based on overwhelming
aerial firepower, and the Phantom was a huge part of that.
The US Air Force deployed the F-4 in an air-to-air combat
role in Vietnam, shooting down enemy fighters and bombers
and they also used it for air-to-ground combat operations.
In 1965 the US launch Operation Rolling Thunder,
an aerial bombing campaign designed to boost morale in South Vietnam
and destroy the war effort in North Vietnam.
However, early on in the campaign, US aircraft began
to fall prey to Soviet built surface-to-air missiles, or SAMS.
We're getting pretty close to the target area
and I saw a guided missile, a SAM missile, take off from the ground
and it doesn’t shoot at you, it shoots where you're going to be. Takes
quite a complicated formula for it to meet.
So if you turn, it turns,
and if you turn really hard, you can dodge it.
You don't see it coming, boom.
It gets you.
My backseater’s
last words of his short life
were “Hey Spike, here it comes”
and I looked to the left and there was a SAM missile right,
right there.
I barely had time to blink my eyes and it didn't hit the plane, but it went off.
It exploded above, everything came down.
Piece of shrapnel hit me in the arm here and came out here and stuck in my leg here.
to combat
this threat, certain F-4 squadrons were set the task of suppressing enemy air
defences and destroying North Vietnamese SAM installations.
The concept was named Wild Weasel.
Specially modified F-4s would fly deep into enemy territory
and attempt to destroy enemy SAMS before they could be shot down themselves.
These were some of the most dangerous missions of the war,
leading to the unofficial motto ‘YGBSM’,
standing for ‘You've gotta be shitting Me’.
Wild Weasel is still carried out today by F-16s of the US Air Force.
By 1966, phantoms were
beginning to face a new enemy in the skies over Vietnam.
Soviet supplied and flown MiG 21.
At first, both the US Navy and the US Air Force felt confident the F-4 phantom
speed, acceleration and firepower would give them the advantage over the MiG.
But limitations in the F-4 design were immediately highlighted.
The Phantoms radar and
missiles were supposed to give it an advantage at long range.
But this technology proved highly unreliable.
The rules of engagement also specified that MiGs must be clearly identified
and displaying hostile intent before they could be engaged.
This required phantom pilots to get in close
something that aircraft was just not designed to do.
The F-4s vast size and weight made it less manoeuvrable than the smaller
MiG and its engines also had the unfortunate tendency
to leave a smoke trail that made it visible from a distance.
Worst of all was the lack of internal gun for short range engagements
Only on F-4 Phantom E was this finally installed.
Navy phantoms, like the one behind me were regularly used to support
bombing missions in Vietnam.
This one served aboard the USS America for ten months
in 1972, supporting operations Linebacker 1 and 2.
America's final and most destructive aerial campaigns of the conflict.
While US forces lost around 150 F-4s during the two operations,
US Navy Squadron VF 74, which this aircraft served with, remarkably
made it through their tour without losing a single phantom to enemy action.
Some of the missions were pathetic.
We're flying 4 aeroplanes.
Each one cost 3 million bucks.
There's two guys on each aeroplane and we take off and go to North Vietnam.
Everybody in the world is shooting at you and you dive bomb a crossing of two roads
where they think there might be fuel buried under the roads.
So here we are and all these fancy aeroplanes and boom,
boom, boom and blow up a lot of dirt.
I can remember one mission where we dropped bombs on a bamboo bridge
and the bombs were longer than the bridge.
All in all, the F-4 performed well in Vietnam, as did the US
Air forces as the whole, but they just could not resurrect
the failed strategy of using air power against guerrilla forces.
As political support waned back home,
the US was eventually forced to withdraw from the war in 1975.
American bombing took a huge toll on Vietnamese civilians.
F-4s dropped napalm and cluster bombs,
both of which are now banned by much of the international community.
But as Vietnam came to an end,
the phantom story was far from over.
Wing ops alert to phantoms.
Scramble, scramble, scramble.
The Air Ministery previously derided the Phantom in the late 1950s
describing it as looking like it had been rolled out upside down.
But they were forced to review their decision in the wake of the cancellation
of the TSR 2 programme. Specially built British Phantoms known as
FGR1s were received by the Royal Navy's fleet air arm in 1968
and were used to defend HMS Ark Royal’s air group.
My last 2 years flying the British Phantom, I really enjoyed, because I could make that thing dance.
Loved it.
Phantom's a lovely aircraft, lovely aircraft.
The RAF were equipped with the FGR 2 in 1969,
an aircraft like this one served in Germany
in ground attack and reconnaissance roles close to the East German border.
From 1982,
Phantoms were sent to the Falkland Islands to provide air defence
in the aftermath of the conflict, including this one
which served in the Falkland Islands between 1983 and 1985.
Well, it's now been replaced by more modern aircraft like the F-15 Eagle,
over 5000 phantoms were built and used operationally
across the globe. At the height of the Cold War,
Phantoms were in service in almost every continent
and were operated by nations like Germany, Japan, Australia and Egypt.
The F-4 Phantom is undoubtedly one of the most prolific,
versatile and enduring jet fighters of all time.
In 2014, a Turkish F-4 was reported
to have conducted an air strike against ISIS militants in Iraq.
And even now, the F-4 is still a limited service
with some nations at nearly 70 years old.
Who knows how much longer it will serve?