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.
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.