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.
It took humongous balls of brass to fly the F-4 brick off aircraft carriers.
Ramp strikes by the score. I saw the bridle hook on one F-4 break halfway through the cat shot. Two fatalities. Peacetime air ops.
A Marine F-4 squadron replaced a Navy squadron transitioning to F-14s. The Marines lost at least two.
Much safer mishap rate after adoption of the F-14.
During my time in the Navy, we were losing at least one plane a month off of our carriers parked near Vietnam. Nobody ever reported that.