I remember an F-4 losing an engine on take-off. They managed to circle back and land.
I was in the tower when a Marine F-4 landed at NAS Albany, GA. The pilot, a Marine Captain, said he was there to pick something up and he’d be leaving shortly. He parks on the main ramp, hops out, runs his errand and is back in no time. He cranks his plane up and calls for taxi, which I cleared. He gets out on the taxiway and immediately starts calling for takeoff clearance. I had an aircraft on final, so I told the F-4 “negative”. He was getting closer to the end of the taxiway and the turn for the runway, and calls again for clearance to takeoff. I told him to hold short. Then I thought I saw smoke coming from his left wheel...grabbed the binocs...and saw fire. I relayed to the pilot that he had a wheel fire. He said “Roger tower, shutting down.”. We rolled the crash crew...which put the fire out. Of course, we trotted out to survey the damage. Fun stuff.
Apparently, after firing up his engines, one of the engines continued to rev up uncontrollably. The yahoo pilot was riding the brakes all the way down the taxiway, trying to keep it from getting away from him. He figured, if he could just get in the air, fly it like it was, declare an emergency at his home station (Cherry Point MCAS, I believe), land, call it a day and be at the O-Club by dinner time. Unfortunately, his brakes overheated and set his wheel on fire.
The F-4 is proof that if you give it enough thrust, you can make a brick fly.
CC