“Well, I’m a Son of Satan’s Angels/And I fly the F-4D/All the way from the Hanoi railroad bridge to the DMZ/I’m one of ol’ Hoot Gibson’s boys and mean as I can be/I’m a Son of Satan’s Angels and I fly the F-4D”—Dick Jonas, Lt. Col, USAF (Ret.), former Vietnam War F-4 Phantom II pilot turned professional singer

Even if the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom weren’t immortalized in song by the people who flew her, she would still go down in history as arguably the single best and most famous third-generation jet fighter.

(NOTE: McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997; however, unlike, say, the merger of Lockheed with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995, or the 1994 merger of Northrop and Grumman to form Northrop Grumman, only one of the predecessor companies’ names, i.e. Boeing’s, was retained.)

F-4E early history and specifications

The F-4 Phantom made her maiden flight on May 27, 1958, and officially entered into operational service with the U.S. Navy in 1961, with the Air Force and Marine Corps following suit shortly thereafter.

Nomenclature-wise, the Phantom II was the "sequel" (in a manner of speaking) to the short-lived 1940s vintage FH Phantom, which made history in her own right during her brief service life as both the first U.S. jet aircraft to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier. Subsequently, it became the first U.S. jet fighter in operational service with both the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

The F-4E was the last variant of the venerable Phantom to be built, produced between 1965 and 1973. The F-4E has the following specifications and vital stats:

·        Fuselage Length: 63 ft 0 in (19.2 m)

·        Wingspan: 38 ft 5 in (11.7 m)

·        Height: 16 ft 5 in (5 m)

·        Max Takeoff Weight: 61,795 lb (28,030 kg)

·        Max Airspeed: Mach 2.23 (1,280 kn; 1,470 mph; 2,370 km/h)

·        Service Ceiling: 60,000 ft (18,000 m)

·        Combat Range: 370 nmi (420 mi, 680 km)

·        Armament: 20 mm (0.787 in) M61A1 Vulcan cannon mounted internally under the nose, 640 rounds; Up to 18,650 lb. (8,480 kg) of ordnance on nine external hardpoints; 4× AIM-9 Sidewinder (U.S. versions) or Python-3 (Israeli Kurnass version) air-to-air missiles on wing pylons

Regarding the Phantom II’s combination of speed and weight, Vietnam veteran pilot Dick Anderegg joked that this overgrown speed demon provided “proof that if you put enough thrust behind a brick you can make it fly” (a comment echoed by Dick Jonas in his book RBAAB: The Red-Blooded All-American Boy). She set a whopping sixteen world speed and altitude records between 1959 and 1962; five of those records would stand until the F-15 Eagle—another McDonnell Douglas product—came along in 1975.

Operational History (In Brief)

The Phantom II served the United States Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps faithfully from the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s and early 1970s all the way to the 1991 Persian Gulf War AKA Operation Desert Storm (with the F-4G Wild Weasel V variant providing the warbird’s aerial combat swan song [bad pun intended]).

During the Vietnam War in particular, after initially starting off behind the power curve against North Vietnamese MiG-17 “Frescoes” and MiG-21 “Fishbeds” (thanks to the ridiculous rules of engagement imposed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara), USAF F-4 MiG Combat Air Patrol (MiGCAP) missions ended up with a far more desirable 5.5:1 kill ratio while their USN counterparts finished with an even more impressive 6.4:1 figure.

The venerable fighter-bomber also acquitted herself in aerial combat at the hands of the Israeli Air Force during multiple Arab-Israeli conflicts including the War of Attrition (July 1967-August 7, 1970) and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, before being finally retired by the Israeli Air Force in 2004. Renamed the Kurnass (“Sledgehammer”), Israeli Air Force Kurmass drivers ended up hammering 116.5 enemy aircraft out of the sky. 

Where Are They Now?

There are now a total of three remaining users of the Phantom: NATO members and therefore American allies Greece and Turkey (though Turkey’s status as a U.S. ally nowadays is only nominal at best)…and, ironically, Iran, one of the worst enemies of the U.S. and Israel alike, which dubs America and Israel as “The Great Satan” and “Little Satan” respectively. (I was going to include South Korea on this list, but upon further review, it turns out that the Republic of Korea Air Force retired its Phantoms this past June.)

According to the World Directory of Modern Military Aircraft, the Hellenic Air Force, Turkish Air Force, and the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) have a total of thirty-three, forty-eight, and sixty-three Phantoms; all three of these users have the RF-4E all-weather tactical reconnaissance variant, and the Iranian air for e also has some F-4Ds and F-4Es in service.

In the case of the Iranians, the jets are holdovers from happier times when Iran was still under the rule of Mohammed Reza Shah, a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel. Iran continues to fly the Phantom due to the fact that international arms sanctions have made finding more modern replacement warbirds rather difficult. The IRIAF has certainly continued to make judicious use of the F-4E in combat; BBC News reports the Iranians used the planes in combat as recently as 2014, in strikes against the Islamic State terrorist group. 

About the Author

Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch , The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS).

Image: Giannis Papanikos / Shutterstock.com