“To this day I have never heard anything louder than 4 Phantoms taking off 2 at a time.”
Try being between two of them hooks to the Bow Cats of a Carrier. Our Mouse-ear helmets offered very little sound buffer when they were at afterburner.
Yes, I believe that, I can only imagine. I was just a civi construction worker at the base. I was usually a fair distance from the runway, but we couldn’t hardly talk to each other when the Phantoms were taking off.