Posted on 01/23/2015 9:11:46 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
First, they tried an F-104. “Not enough wing or thrust,” recalls Jack Petry, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel. When NASA engineers were launching rockets at Florida’s Cape Canaveral in the 1960s, they needed pilots to fly close enough to film the missiles as they accelerated through Mach 1 at 35,000 feet. Petry was one of the chosen. And the preferred chase airplane was the McDonnell F-4 Phantom.
“Those two J79 engines made all the difference,” says Petry. After a Mach 1.2 dive synched to the launch countdown, he “walked the [rocket’s] contrail” up to the intercept, tweaking closing speed and updating mission control while camera pods mounted under each wing shot film at 900 frames per second. Matching velocity with a Titan rocket for 90 extreme seconds, the Phantom powered through the missile’s thundering wash, then broke away as the rocket surged toward space. Of pacing a Titan II in a two-seat fighter, Petry says: “Absolutely beautiful. To see that massive thing in flight and be right there in the air with it—you can imagine the exhilaration.”
***
For nearly four decades of service in the U.S. military, the Phantom performed every combat task thrown at it—almost every mission ever defined.
(Excerpt) Read more at airspacemag.com ...
Actually McLame was a light attack guy. He was in a A-4 Skyhawk when shot down.
Yom Kippur War "Israeli Phantoms shot down 85 Arab combat aircraft, mostly MiG-21s, for a kill-loss ratio in aerial combat of 17-1 during the war."
What tactics were used? Air-to-Air missiles or close-in dogfighting?
VMFA 314 ping
One of our congressmen, Sam Johnson, was an F4 pilot in Vietnam. After taking a missile strike, he ejected a near Mach, dislocating his shoulder from the wind blast.
He spent 6 years as a captive in Hanoi.
I’ve always thought F4s were cool. What was the significance of the barrel rolls?
Victory rolls I suspect. Our squadron once had an air show for all the Marines and their families. We were all close up to the flight line and Capt. Savio ripped his Phantom up the flight line just barely off the deck at high speed. After he passed us he kicked it up at 45 degrees and did a couple of barrel rolls. I can’t imagine how many G’s he pulled with stunt.
When in a Cessna 182 awaiting takeoff in Colorado Springs, I saw an F-4 hitting the AB’s as he started his takeoff. We were 4th in line, on a taxiway paralleling the runway, about 300 meters from him. As he went by us the noise was deafening. I loved it.
We then put-put-putted toward our takeoff.
You might enjoy this website. Here's a quote:
The F-4E was the major USAF variant with 959 aircraft produced for the USAF and 428 produced for export. Although the original Model 98B proposed four 20-mm cannons, a design change in 1954 called for a long-range high-altitude Mach 2 interceptor of which only missiles would be required.However, experience in Vietnam with air-to-air encounters showed that this arrangement was inadequate since the earlier Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles did not perform up to expectations. They frequently missed their targets and were subject to countermeasures.
SUU-16 gun pods were installed on the F-4C but the extra drag degraded performance and took the place of ordinance or fuel pods.
To correct this, an internal General Electric Vulcan (M61A) 20 mm, six-barrel, rotary-cannon with 639 rounds was installed on the F-4E.
Due to limited space, a new nose configuration was adopted from the RF-4C reconnaissance version, housing an AN/APQ-120 radar set with a smaller 24.5" x 27.4" antenna and an external pod below the nose housed the cannon.
BTTT
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