Posted on 06/14/2026 8:45:39 AM PDT by rlmorel
After 7 long years, the Collings F-4 Phantom is back in the air!
A MASSIVE thank you to the museum volunteers who made this possible. Without them, there's no way any of this could have happened. And a special thank you to Harry “D-Day” Daye for allowing me to backseat this flight! We are so excited for what this year has in store for both the VWFM and the Collings Foundation planes.
And as always, thank you to the Collings Foundation for allowing us to fix and fly this beautiful jet! If you want to see more of the Vietnam War Flight Museums' aircraft or support either of these amazing organizations, click here: https://www.vietnamwarflight.com
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It is absolutely emblematic of an era.
When my father was deployed to Yokosuka in 1967, we landed at Yokota AFB, and I remember taxiing past long rows of these, painted up in just that camo scheme, though in my memory, I recall more black in the camouflage scheme where this one doesn’t appear to have much, if any.
I can tell, you, in my nine year old mind, I thought that long row of Phantoms on the flight line was the baddest-ass thing I had ever seen and I had my face pressed to the window.
When I lived in Subic Bay, I would spend hours at Cubi Point (where the beaches were) watching them take off and land, and I would walk around where the tarmac where they were all parked, peering into the intakes, looking in the tailpipes, sticking my head up in the wheel wells and marveling at all the piping.
As a 12 year old boy, I would follow the pilots as they did their pre-flight walk-arounds, but never got invited to sit in the cockpit like I did by one F-8 Crusader pilot did, and even let me put on his helmet. As I climbed out of the cockpit to let him climb in, he grinned down and said something like "I'll do a special takeoff you, kid!" When he took off, he climbed out at about a 75 degree angle, and did a series of four or five sequential aileron rolls for my entertainment!
How things have changed. Now, I am certain they would never let me wander around the flight line, but back then, nobody seemed to care a bit. (I did get captured once by two guys in a jeep with a checkered flag on it when I walked across the runway...I looked both ways, didn't see any aircraft in the pattern, and walked across. Heh, they drove out in that jeep, both guys grabbed me the arms and tossed me in the back. They interrogated me an tried to call my parents, but I gave them a fake number!)
When I was aboard the USS JFK, I saw USMC Phantoms (and an occasional Navy Phantom) make a trap now and again, and when they shot it back off, they had to break out the catapult cables where were rarely used in the mid-Seventies.
I thought the Phantom was the most incredible, masculine, and deadly looking flying machine ever built as a kid, and I drew it incessantly in school when I should have been paying attention to my subjects!
Ping!
Those big muthas would come in as low and slow and as close as they dared. More than once have I felt the heat from their napalm.
Yes, these things are incredible wicked looking.
I used to watch them do bombing runs. You could see them streak down from the clouds in a steep dive, then the smoke from the ordinance, then hear the F14 in the dive, then hear the ordinance explode. The sound was delayed because it travels slower than light.
The F-4 is the rudest, loudest and crudest war plane ever. Which is why it is loved.
Duke Cunningham's story where he became a fighter ace in the F4 is a classic. Too bad his career in the Housee ended in discrace.
Thank you for your service there.
I posted this because I knew that for many who served over there and saw these badass aircraft roaring in with those twin J-79 engines, it must have brought on feelings of relief, gratitude, and even some joy at seeing people who were trying to kill you get some.
I got very nostalgic when I saw this thing fly.
Sigh. Yeah. That greatly saddened me.
Marines had a lot of them at the Air Station I was stationed Stateside. The Navy was beginning to transition to F-15s, but you are right. The F-4 was awesome. I saw two crash at the Naval Air Station I posted at while having lunch on the tarmac hanger. Someone had shoved the intake cover into the front intake and when he went afterburner, it blew up. Pilot bailed though and was OK. The other crash involved a Pilot who bailed and crashed his plane in a small lake just south of the runway. All exciting stuff, but we have advanced since then.
Sierra Hotel!
We had Skyhawks, Crusaders and Phantoms for close-in air support. The Crusaders always fired all their rockets in a single pass and then skedaddled. The others might hang around for a while. It was awesome when they fired their cannons.
Cool jet Pingy
When I was aboard the JFK, A-6s and A-7s would occasionally drop groups of MK82 iron bombs a short distance from the beam of the ship (as either training or for crew entertainment) and you got this sequence:
First, you would see the large, vertical columns of white water fly up into the air.
Then, you would feel and hear the explosions as the shock waves traveled underwater and hit the hull of the ship with a metallic heavy thudding sound.
Last, you would hear the explosions through the air as you stood on the flight deck.
I loved it when they did that!
Thanks. you pinged me just as I was reading the comments!
A-10 says, "Bbbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttttttttttttt!"
Name something better than a J-79 on afterburner.
Most Americans don’t realize just how many planes, worldwide and statewide crashed during the Cold War. Now, planes crash due to malfunction or accident a lot less often than they used to, but back then, you only heard about them if the planes were tied to your squadron or base, if it happened in a heavily populated area, or if civilians were killed.
I saw four planes crash with my own eyes (and one A-6 flying tanker duty that I didn’t see but just disappeared with no trace in the Bermuda Triangle and one plane in my squadron that crashed stateside on a cross-country flight) in my four year hitch in the Seventies, and I was just one guy in one squadron on one ship. That was happening all over the world, but because there was no Internet, people rarely heard about it.
disgrace
F-4 nicknames:
Double Ugly
Rhino
Lead Sled
Old Smokey
The Spook
Eisenschwein / Eisensau: Meaning “Iron Pig” or “Iron Sow”
Fliegender Ziegelstein: Meaning “Flying Brick”
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