Most folks don’t realize how BIG an F-4 is,
or how LOUD. When I was stationed at Chu Lai
we would make tapes to send home but didn’t
realize that we were so used to hearing them
in afterburner that our conversations would just
stop until they had taken off and would then continue
as though nothing had happened. We were flying A-4s
off of matting which for the scooters was no big deal
but the Phantoms were big and heavy and didn’t do well
with the unevenness. Saw several lose their bombracks
from the vibration and roughness, most of them didn’t arm
but on occasion they would lose a single bomb or two then
BOOM.
Great bird, just sitting there it looked fast!
Nighttime ‘burner takeoffs. Fox-4s rolled sequentially in groups of three; where I was there was no jet noise until they lit off, then a tail of flame, must have been forty feet long and the ground shook until they cleared the active. Got to the horizon before the afterburners winked out. They were pounding NVA tanks near Loc Ninh. Loved what they did.
Easter Offensive, June 1972.
That bird cost my hearing, or at least a significant part of it, but it was one impressive machine. Our shop placed the last F-4 left in USAF inventory on a range in Eglin. It was the end of an era.
Yep. Every O-6 and above in the Air Wing was deaf as a 90 year old.