F-4 Phantom The dogfighter without guns


The F-4 was rolled out in 1960 after a Fairly short design period. It was originally set as a navy fighter bomber but was soon adopted by all the services as it proved capable in a multi-role role. The Phantom was a monster of a plane. Coming out at 65 feet long with 35,000 Pounds of thrust the thing could fly sideways. It lacked the agility of the soviet fighters it fought but it was much faster and had better radar systems. The main problem pilots had with it at first was the lack of guns. This meant that if it got to dogfighting enemy MIGs had the advantage in firepower as the early air to air missiles were not as reliable as was once thought. This was somewhat rectified with a gun pod but the pod could only fire at high speeds and if the airspeed got to low it could not fire. Late models introduces an internal gun. Even with this upgrade pilot kills were often scored with missiles. The missiles were very unreliable quote “Studies showed that 45 percent of Vietnam-era AIM-7s and 37 percent of AIM-9s failed either to launch or lock on, and after evasive maneuvers, the probability of achieving a kill fell to eight percent and 15 percent for the two types, respectively. The Falcon missiles were even worse, and the Pentagon later withdrew them from service.". But the F-4 could carry a lot of them.
The USAF Claimed 103 MIGs shot down at a loss of only 40 phantoms. The Navy got a better kill ratio with 40 kills and only 7 lost. It got to the point where Elaborate ruses had to be used to draw out enemy fighters in Vietnam. One squadron was used exclusively for ground strike against radar AA. They were called the Wild Weasels and also had a very high success rate in the ground strike role. Even with Its faults the F-4 is still used by some countries as their primary fighter. The Phantom is a long lived and very successful fighter.

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 2, 2018 at 3:54 PM

    Well it seems we should have given the designers more time to make it smaller and improve the missile problems.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMay 3, 2018 at 6:33 PM

    You are so excessive with your amount of knowledge on planes. What fascinates you so much?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 4, 2018 at 8:55 AM

    Very interesting!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Daylight Bombing vs Night Bombing

Image
In WWII There was a debate on the best time to deliver ordinance. At night casualties would be lower, but at day munitions could be dropped more accurately. The  British went with night bombing as their early war causalities were atrocious. But then the Americans joined. The American bombers were equipped with something called a Norden bomb sight. This was the most advanced bomber sight ever designed. It allowed bombers to target and destroy targets with pinpoint accuracy. But these bomb sights couldn't be used at night. You cannot target what you cant see. The British worked around this with fire munitions. But American commanders were not willing to take the hit in accuracy. So they gathered massive swarms of bombers that were armed to the teeth with guns. Unfortunately this was not enough to deter the German Luftwaffe. Causalities were astronomical. The commanders knew they needed to protect the bombers if they were to keep up the campaign. The solution they found was the P-5
Read more

Battle of Guadalcanal

Image
During WWII the Japanese Empire took many islands in the pacific. During the campaign to take them back the allies took the island of Guadalcanal. This island was chosen due to the small airfield being constructed there. This would become the main airbase of choice during this phase of the campaign. The Marines there operated F4F fighters and SBD dive bombers. The Japanese tried for a year to regain control the the island and this lead to a almost daily combat from august 7th 1942 to February 9th 1943. The pilots employed a particular tactic called Thatch's Weave. It involved 2 Wildcats making a crisscross pattern. If an enemy plane goes after one the wingman can engage and shoot down the threat.  The Marines    sank or destroyed 17 large enemy vessels as well as shooting down   268 Japanese planes in aerial combat. This was one of the largest air engagements of the Pacific theater and really demonstrated the skill of the U.S. aviators.
Read more

Robin Olds The Epitome Of Fighter Pilots

Image
Robin Olds started his piloting career in a P-38 Lightning in the European theater. His first kills were a pair of Focke Wulf 190s. Late he and a wingman engaged a formation of 40 BF-109s and he came out with 5 kills one of which occurred while his engine was off due to fuel starvation. He became the first ace of the 479th fighter group. When the 479th converted to P-51s he had a total of 8 kills in the 38. In the P-51 he topped off his kill count with 4 more air to air kills and 11 destroyed while on runways. In Vietnam he took to the sky again and killed 4 more enemy aircraft. 2 of these were scored in operation Bolo. Bolo was an attempt to bring enemy MIGs out to fight. MIGs avoided fighters and instead went for slow vulnerable attack aircraft  like the F-105 Thunderchief. Olds fitted 105 jammer pods to the F-4s and used their callsigns in order to make the MIGs think they were bombers. at the end of the day the Vietnamese lost 7 of their remaining 16 aircraft in the inventory. Th
Read more