Posted on 01/23/2015 9:11:46 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
In Vietnam, the U.S. Navy used the F-4 for ground attack. (US Navy via D. Sheley)
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If they rebuild it (or the F-14) with composites and carbon-carbon and stealthy radar absorbent material... nah, they would still cut it off for the F-35 Blunderbuss
It couldn’t fire guns because it had none?
Glide ratio of a pair of pliers. It proves that if you strap a jet engine to just about anything then it will fly.
What couldn’t it do?
They weren’t much of a glider.
The one in the photo has a gun in the chin. A late model F-4.
The Marines had plenty of them.
Salute VMFAT-201.
Sneak up on anything. The F-4 was originally an experiment to turn jet fuel into noise and smoke. Flight was an unexpected but useful side effect.
Glide?
“They werent much of a glider.”
Actually, the F-4 wasn’t all that bad. A Cessna has about a 500 foot per minute glide decent rate at 65 knots, which gives it a 500 foot per mile glide ratio. An F-4 is just half that at 1000 foot per mile glide ratio. Not all that bad, really.
Excellent description.
And a brick is about 1,200?
1,100 or so. hehe
That was a big drawback (which was later remedied). An odd oversight, considering earlier dogfights with MiGs during the Korean War.
The F-4s could deal with the MiGs, so my dad and his fellow Thud pilots had a better chance of completing their missions and making it home.
I’ll bet a JDAM has a better glide ratio. Just a guess.
I grew up in the early 70’s on a farm that was on a common flight path for F-4’s. This was before supersonic flight was banned. They were loud and would scare the poo out of you when they would make low level supersonic flights over our house. Had more than our fair share of broken windows.
Eliminate gas or the engines and it became ballistically equal to a brick striving to prove that gravity always win.
Also nose up (high alpha) approaching stall speed the rudder became ineffective and it said so in the -1 owner's manual.
You fell off wherever the beast wanted to go. The Navy gave the USAF the AOA indicator and it made a difference in how well you slept at night!
There was a period of time - in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, I believe - during which accepted Air Force doctrine and policy was that there would be no more dogfights. That dogfights couldn’t happen anymore because closing speeds and angular rates were so high that human reaction times wouldn’t be able to deal with a dogfight.
Air Force thinking was - for a time - that everything would depend on air-to-air missiles and other stand-off capabilities.
Perhaps the lack of guns on the Phantom was a result of this policy.
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