With 5195 produced from 1958 to 1981, the Macdonell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
had the largest production run of any supersonic fighter built in the US
and was the most widely used by western countries and allies.
It was also a revolutionary aircraft for the time setting 15 world records within it’s first
28 months with many innovative features and was adopted by all three of the US armed services,
the Navy, Airforce and Marines, seeing active duties from the Vietnam war to the gulf war
and even as a testbed by the Sandia National Labs. Infact is was so successful that as of 2020,
it is still in service in five countries around the world,
this is the story of the F-4 Phantom, the aircraft that set the template for future fighters.
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The F-4 Phantom was one of the most advanced of what is now commonly regarded as a
third-generation fighter. This saw the increased use of guided missiles for air to air combat,
improved aerodynamic performance, new pulse doppler radar and extensive use of titanium
in it’s airframe amongst many other advances. Although many think of the F-4 Phantom as mostly
an aircraft used by the USAF, it was originally developed by Macdonell Douglas which is now are
of Boeing as a Naval fleet defence fighter. In 1952 and with no new aircraft competitions
upcoming, Macdonell Douglas conducted studies to determine what might be needed in the near
future and concluded that the Navy had the greatest need for a new type of aircraft,
an attack fighter with supersonic capabilities. It already had the McDonnell F3H Demon in progress
but problems with the original Westinghouse J40 engine meant it had to be redesigned
to accept the Allison J71 but this was not capable of supersonic performance.
McDonnell took design cues from earlier aircraft like the XF-88 Voodoo and F3H demon and proposed
an all weather “super demon” fleet defence fighter to the Navy with two engines and a two-seat design
to enable a second crew member to operate the increasingly sophisticated radar and weapons.
In 1955 the Navy ordered two XF-4H-1 test and 5 YF4H-1 pre-production aircraft. After tests
in 1958 and a series of design changes, it was tested against the navy’s Crusader III
and the navy declared the new plane winner due to the two-man operation greater future potential.
The new aircraft was given the designation of F4H and the proposed name of “Satan” or “Mithras”,
though in the end the less controversial name of Phantom II was adopted and for
the US navy it was designated the F-4B The F-4B Phantom had two General Electric
J79 engines each with 16,100 lbs of afterburner thrust, three times the amount that of the F3H
Demon. This extra thrust would be needed for a fighter which had a maximum take-off weight of
27,000kg and able to carry upto 8,480kg of weapons, almost 3 times
that of the WW2 B-17 flying fortress. Like some other engines of the time
in particular the TF33 in the B-52, the J79’s were quite smokey at mid-thrust cruising speed,
this would create a trail which made it easy for anyone to locate the aircraft, all you had to
do to find the F-4’s where just look to the head of the smoke trial. This was eventually fixed in
1972 with a clean burn J79’s in the F-4N models for the Navy and F-4S models for the airforce.
The sheer power of the twin J79’s would also make it one of the fastest fighters in the world
capable of reaching Mach 2.23 with a climb rate of 41,000ft per min or 210 metres per second
something that NASA would take advantage of during the Gemini space program.
In fact one of the 15 world records it set was for the highest flight altitude of
98,557 ft in December 1959. Navy pilots found if they missed the arresting wire on a carrier
landing even with the engines idling, by applying full throttle they could spool up fast enough
to turn a potential dip in the ocean into a touch and go landing and fly around for another try.
Just 31 months after its first flight the Navy’s F-4 was the highest flying,
fastest and longest range fighter in the US.
This certainly attracted the interest of the USAF and soon they too had F-4C as mainly an
air superiority fighter but it was also equally good as a ground attack aircraft.
Although the Phantom had superior power, speed and radar, the decision not to fit a canon was
soon found to be a weakness as the early guided missiles were less than effective and prone to
inference making them lose their target lock. Once out of missiles the F-4 had to rely on
its speed to get away from the battle zone but the lighter more agile Soviet-supplied MiG’s
could out turn the heavy Phantom and get behind them to shoot them down.
Soon a 20mm cannon pod became a common fitment for both air to air and air to ground situations. This
had 1200 rounds of ammunition, however, the power for the earlier canon pods was supplied
by a ram air turbine which limited the maximum speed to 400mph just short of 650 km/h so it was
mostly used for air to ground sorties until a high speed internally powered version became available.
Later USAF models culminating in the F-4E incorporated a 20mm canon on the lower nose,
upgraded engines, radar, guided missiles, wing aerodynamics and
electronic countermeasures like podded jammers.
By the end of the Vietnam war the Phantom had become a much more capable fighter than when it
started some 10 years earlier and had shot down more enemy aircraft than any other US plane.
It’s battle-proven capabilities made it an export success with it becoming the west’s
most important tactical fighter. Elsewhere and earlier on the F-4’s
exceptional climb capabilities were put to use by NASA during the Gemini space program.
The problem NASA had was that as the Titan rocket which was to be used to carry the Gemini crew into
space went through Max Q, the point of maximum aerodynamic stress and breaking the sound barrier,
the cameras on the ground couldn’t see the rocket body clearly and if it was flexing
with the stresses, something that could cause it to break up.
They figured that if they could fly a high-speed aircraft alongside the rocket during the launch
they could take close up photos of the rocket body.
NASA tried F-104 starfighters but found them inadequate
so they tried with a pair of F-4 Phantoms. They rigged them with cameras and flew them
towards the rocket as it launched from Cape Canaveral from either side at 35,000 ft then they
pulled up to fly alongside the Titan vertically up to 68,000 ft over 90 seconds
taking close up photos along the way. Once back on the ground the photos were developed
and showed the Titan rocket was indeed performing well and there was no flexing in the rocket body.
But time and tide wait for no man and the march of technology eventually caught up with the Phantoms
helped out by the Oil crisis of the 1970s. The twin J79 engines may well have given the F-4
superior performance but it also made them expensive to run
and with new lighter and more economical fighters such as the F-15 and F-16 coming on to the scene
the days of the F-4 were numbered, certainly in the US.
By 1987 they were retired from active service in the Navy but in the USAF they were still
used in reconnaissance roles and that of the of the wild weasels as part the 561st
Joint Tactics Squadron to hunt down and destroy Iraqi radar sites in the first gulf war in 1990.
In 1988, the Sandia National Labs used a complete F-4 on a rocket sled to test the
effects of a plane crashing into a 3.66 metre thick block of reinforced concrete
for the Institute of Structural Mechanics, Inc., of Tokyo, something that was revisited
after the 9/11 attacks to gain a greater understanding of planes crashing to buildings.
But the final purpose for the remaining USAF and US Navy Phantoms was to act as
target drones for newer fighters to practice on, the last of which occurred in 2016.
Some F-4’s have been rescued by museums and private operators
but in five airforces including in Iran, Japan, South Korea, Greece and Turkey, 231 Phantoms
still remain in active service, not bad for a plane that first flew in 1958, 62 years ago.
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