Last US F-4 Flight

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by SluggoF16

I had a classmate in UPT who was a Guardsman and had been an F-4 WSO; my primary T-38 instructor was a former F-4 pilot. They both said that the F-4 didn't use ailerons for roll unless completely unloaded (1 or less G). Otherwise in order to turn the pilot led with the rudder and applied back stick pressure. The aircraft would then roll. Applying aileron to roll while the AOA was building up was, in a hard-wing F-4 (not a slatted F-4E or later), a bad idea. The slatted F-4 fixed that. My T-38 IP demoed it, it was pretty neat, as the T-38 would rudder-roll all day with its stubby low aspect ratio wings. (Same wing area as a C-172 but 6 times the weight.) The F-16 computer wouldn't let you rudder-roll.

In any aircraft if you roll to 90 degrees and pull the aircraft will nose slice. Killed a friend of mine in the A-10 when he overbanked and was looking at a bandit behind him, didn't see the nose slice until it was too late. At 500 feet AGL a 75 degree banked turn requires ~4 Gs to maintain level flight (1/[cosine of bank angle]); with a ten degree overbank to 85 degrees the "time to die" is 5.7 seconds. This is in any aircraft (although not totally true, top rudder in some aircraft may delay that time), at any airspeed. At 90 degrees the cosine of the bank angle is zero. 1 divided by zero is infinity, so at 90 degrees of bank, unless some aerodynamic surface is providing lift, the aircraft will descend. A-10, T-6, F-16, F-35, A380, doesn't matter. Remember the B-52 crash at Fairchild in the 90s? Overbank. I used to teach that very class when a schoolhouse instructor, and we used to say "physics have no regard for rank or experience level".

Whew. Time to go to BWW for a beer.

Thank you. If we were local, that beer would be on me!

[amil23]

I got to see the Blue Angels in 71 and T-Birds in 73 when I was in AF. I'm no pilot but I remember those rock-steady and carefree fighter pilots at the pool at the 'O' club and I sure was jealous. Just being around the F4 was enough to make you step a little lighter. One time we heard Steve Ritchie was on our base or maybe he was there all the time and one of our crew had seen him. Excitement for a country boy pogue! We used to sit on a road at the end of the runway and get our jollies watching the F4's take off at Holoman. It was fun getting your brain scrambled for a few minutes. I'll always remember the Phantom and the Hercules.

[hunterseat]

My Marine squadron was the only photo reconnaissance unit in the Corps. One great thing about those photo bays, they could hold a lot of lobster! (Or other local souvenirs)
RIP you old bent-winged-bug-sucker.

[GregW]

I remember F-4's operating over the Mekong Delta when I was playing the ugly boatman game in 1966 or so. Loud, fast and not very helpful.


Sluggo - Thanks for the math on turning etc. I was at a special airshow in Concord, NH when a copy of the Grenville family was witnesses a copy of a 1930 something GB-R2 flying. The amazing thing was watching a milk bottle shaped (blunt end forward) airplane, that had the reputation of being nearly impossible to control, not just fly but dance. At one point it actually climbed out with the wings vertical and the lift developed by the fat fuselage. This shape accommodated a radial engine and was the basis of the Navy fighters during WW2.


After the show the pilot, Mr. Delmar Benjamin, filled the tanks and said he would be flying home to Kalispell, MT before dark.


Last I heard the airplane and the builder/pilot were both retired.

[High_Plains_Retired]

I only worked on one F-4 and it was a transient in the late 1960s.

Sorry to see the fighter go.