Posted on 01/23/2015 9:11:46 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
First, they tried an F-104. “Not enough wing or thrust,” recalls Jack Petry, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel. When NASA engineers were launching rockets at Florida’s Cape Canaveral in the 1960s, they needed pilots to fly close enough to film the missiles as they accelerated through Mach 1 at 35,000 feet. Petry was one of the chosen. And the preferred chase airplane was the McDonnell F-4 Phantom.
“Those two J79 engines made all the difference,” says Petry. After a Mach 1.2 dive synched to the launch countdown, he “walked the [rocket’s] contrail” up to the intercept, tweaking closing speed and updating mission control while camera pods mounted under each wing shot film at 900 frames per second. Matching velocity with a Titan rocket for 90 extreme seconds, the Phantom powered through the missile’s thundering wash, then broke away as the rocket surged toward space. Of pacing a Titan II in a two-seat fighter, Petry says: “Absolutely beautiful. To see that massive thing in flight and be right there in the air with it—you can imagine the exhilaration.”
***
For nearly four decades of service in the U.S. military, the Phantom performed every combat task thrown at it—almost every mission ever defined.
(Excerpt) Read more at airspacemag.com ...
In Vietnam, the U.S. Navy used the F-4 for ground attack. (US Navy via D. Sheley)
Read more: http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/what-couldnt-f-4-phantom-do-180953944/#ixzz3PfKflrXz
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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 weren’t 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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