5 Things You Never Knew About the F-4 Phantom

the F4 Phantom one of the most recognizable and iconic aircraft in the history of military Aviation its famous durability speed and Effectiveness as a combat fighter makes it one of the most widely used military jets in history in this video however we will test your knowledge and dive into the Forgotten history the details and stories that many have never even heard so here are five things you likely never knew about the F4 Phantom now normally this is where I would talk about this video's sponsor but instead I want to take a few seconds and introduce my good friend F4 Phantom pilot and Vietnam veteran Carl parlatore I was I'm not a video guy I I'm not into that kind of stuff but one day I was watching uh I was on a computer and I noticed this advertisements about this new game called War Thunder and it has to do with airplanes and since I'm an old fighter pilot I said geez I got to try this well that was a mistake for me because once I started to play the game I got hooked and I've been been on War Thunder for oh I don't know five or five and a half years straight every day I get on the game and I play it and I thoroughly enjoy it it's the closest thing to combat I could think of than actually being in combat right this is from a guy who's been shot down guys by the way if Carl enjoys War Thunder so will you so support tj3 history today and try it totally free at the link below and join the best vehicle combat game around available for PC PS5 Xbox series xns and previous gen consoles without further Ado enjoy to begin our list for today we will start at appropriately the beginning of the F4 Phantom specifically we will go over some of the unusual and unorthodox design choices that were utilized in this fighter now in order to understand why this was such an unusual aircraft when it entered service let's look at some of the most common aircraft utilized by the US military in the decades before Vietnam the F9 Panther the f-84 thunderjet and the f-86 saber now what can we notice about all of these aircraft the primary difference is they only have one man in the cockpit this is where we see our first unique feature of the F4 Phantom unlike any of the other fighter aircraft in U.S history at this time the F4 Phantom utilized a two-man crew the use of a two-man crew in a fighter jet to me is one of the most interesting developments in fighter aircraft after World War II and it certainly is because the weapons system became so much more complex if you take in the case uh you know even the the Old World War II TVM where you have a bombardier you have a three-man crew you have a pilot you got a a machine gunner and you have a bombardier in the belly of the aircraft you know separating the tasks one gets to focus on dropping the Torpedoes or the bombs you got a machine gunner that's like defending you against enemy aircraft coming in to get you in the pilot who's essentially doing you know the navigating and machine gunning from the wing guns and something like that you get to the point where you have like this F4 where now you have something that is flying uh extremely fast or can fly extremely fast uh supersonic speeds and the way I think the tip to me the pivotal difference is the uh sophistication of the radar system the OG 10 radar for example of being able to find multiple adversaries at the same time and to and so you have a a separate crew person who was managing uh you know those targets and those threats while the pilot can uh look out for adversary aircraft coming in and still navigate the plane and keep it uh keep it on course so I think at the end of the day it means that the workload of the air crew because of the technology certainly helped but the sophistication of it just really Rose way past to where they were when they were flying hellcats or p-51s and having a two-man crew where you divided that labor became necessary now let's see how well you know the F4 what was the name of this Aviator that sat in the second seat a the Rio radar intercept officer B jib guy in back C voice in the luggage compartment or D all of the above surprisingly the answer is all of the above and no I'm not making that up but no worries if you missed that one there's plenty more trivia coming and make sure to comment at the end so that we can see what you knew now throughout the history of the F4 this jib was generally a certified Navigator in charge of the radar weapons and targeting systems but this was not always the case the U.S Air Force initially actually tried to put a second pilot in the back seat and although from this position they could fly and land the aircraft in a general sense Pilots usually disliked operating the aircraft from the back this was because the line of sight was very limited and there were far fewer instruments that were visible from this position so shortly after the U.S Air Force made it clear that exclusively specialized radar operators were to sit in the back seat rather than certified Pilots but this was not the only unique design choice that can be seen in the F4 Phantom compared to its counterparts as we look to the tail section of the F4 we can see that there is another interesting feature so one of the interesting things about the F4 is the horizontal stabilizer which is not quite horizontal it's got a dihedral to it it's actually an inverted airfoil so normally a horizontal stabilizer um is uh is an airfoil with the lift on the top this is the this is just the opposite the lift is on the bottom so that when you're controlling it you you get a more downward force uh which is what you you know which apparently is what they wanted when they designed this but it is an unusual thing about the F4 and after the tail we can look forward to check out the wings to see another interesting detail yeah so the F4 is a Navy aircraft that was originally designed for the Navy has folding wings and the reason it has folding Wings is to make more room to Stow the airplane on the uh on the carrier I don't know if this is a true story or not but um supposedly somebody tried to take off an F4 from Land uh with the wings folded and he actually got it into the air I don't know what actually happened I assume he got back I don't know if that's a true story or not but I've been told that that's happened but one of the interesting things you can see here is all the Locking pins right because when you when you bring the wing down you've got to be able to lock it in place and so you can see all the Locking pins here and it's all hydraulic so one of the things on the checklist was you better make sure your wings are your wings are deployed and not stowed after this interview with Mike I followed up on this story and it turns out he is exactly right apparently on multiple occasions F4 Pilots actually forgot to raise the wings but because of the pure power of the Phantom and the small folding section of the Wings they were able to get airborne as can be seen here now that was the easy stuff the facts will only get more obscure from here up next at number four we will take a look at the world records broken by the F4 Phantom to begin with the very first record that the F4 set was actually an altitude record in 1959 let's see if you know this one what was the top altitude that was reached in the famous record-setting flight by Commander Lawrence Flint a 38 100 feet B 47 200 feet C 68 800 feet or D 98 500 feet the Phantom was a very well used aircraft in test and evaluation by both the Navy and the Air Force they would do altitude testing on it and in particular Pilots that found themselves in test pilot jobs were tasked with stressing the aircraft in many different ways and one of them was altitude an altitude is useful for evasion purposes it's it's useful for observation purposes and it's you know got a few other uses but the Phantom in particular did a world record flight of over 98 000 feet which is pretty darn incredible I mean I think that's that's like space it's almost like space at that point so pretty incredible pretty incredible feat if you got this one right well done because a flight at 98 000 feet was practically unheard of in 1959. for perspective at that altitude the view of the sky outside the cockpit is mostly black at that point and in addition to Simply flying at this altitude the time that it took to get there was also set by the F4 multiple Milestones would be broken here with the F4 taking less than 49 seconds to get to 6 000 meters of altitude 179 seconds to get to 20 000 and 372 seconds to get to an altitude of 30 000 meters but the F4 would break plenty more the way the Phantom was able to set these altitude records was obviously because of its power this power would also set a long list of speed records in 1960 the F4 broke the record for a 100 kilometer closed course with a speed of 1 390 miles per hour in 1961 it also broke the world absolute speed record over a 20-mile course at 166 miles per hour and most noteworthy the F4 broke a record that actually involved a tragic fatality in 1961 this would be a speed record for a three mile closed course when flying exclusively below 125 feet of altitude the speed record set here would be a mind-boggling 902 miles per hour this however was only set on the second attempt during the first attempt at breaking This Record Commander J.L Feldman was piloting and attempting a run when he experienced a mechanical failure in his aircraft this small failure caused the airframe of the F4 to break apart in mid-air killing both himself and the backseater this would be recorded as the first fatality in the F4 Phantom at number three we will move to the Armament of the F4 now we have clearly learned that the F4 Phantom could get to the combat zone and perform in the air once it was there but what sort of Firepower did it bring to the table specifically the F4 could carry quite the Arsenal with a payload limit of about 19 000 pounds it could level any Target that it needed to for perspective this is about the same bomb capacity as the B-29 super Fortress the common weapons that it carried were standard bombs laser guided bombs Napalm and air to ground and air-to-air missiles in addition to the standard Weaponry though there was also another note about extra fuel tanks carried by the F4 Phantom which can be seen here and were dropped over Vietnam as f4s typically entered Combat on this hard point these are auxiliary fuel tanks just big you know Hollow pieces of of aluminum and of course once you uh once you've used up all the fuel you you get rid of these because it cleans up the aerodynamics of the airplane I've been told that you'll find lots of pontoon boats in the areas of Vietnam made out of these tanks these pontoon boats can in fact be seen all over Vietnam even today and showed just how many f4s were tearing across the skies in this conflict throughout all of the interesting details of the loadout and weapons of the F4 there is something else that you might have noticed missing a gun this is because when the F4 Phantom was designed a standard gun was purposefully left off of the aircraft a choice which would prove to have regrettable repercussions the F4 was designed to be an all-missile fighter very similar to its counterpart the mig-21 so it's interesting how many similarities in development that they have uh so it was originally designed to carry the aim 7 A9 missiles The Sparrows and the sidewinders and it was anticipated that in the type of engagements that the Phantom would find itself in because that its adversaries would be flying facing fast flying jets as well mig-15s mig-19s mig-21s that missiles were the way to shoot down your adversaries so that was part of the original concept and design for attaching The Sparrows and the Sidewinders to the Phantom they decided that the days of dog fighting were over a close-in dog fighting were over because they felt in supersonic speeds the supersonic speeds they couldn't make the turns so it never was not armed with a gun initially just with missiles so it turns out that ended up being not quite a correct assumption because the when they got in involved in a dogfight particularly the speeds quickly came down to subsonic speeds and uh The Rules of Engagement in Vietnam were that you had to identify the aircraft before you fired so that you wouldn't shoot down another aircraft with friendly fire so you weren't able to stand off and shoot missiles like they designed it combat experience teaches air Crews a lot of things and there's all kinds of changes that are made to aircraft designs as a result of uh what it's really like out there fighting an adversary there's one engagement in particular that stands out to me uh as a good example for a demonstrating the need to have a gun on the aircraft and this particular engagement was not specifically the one that made all the difference in putting the guns uh on the aircraft but it illustrates what what is happening up there in the air when the aircraft is flying so here you have a situation where a a bomber is flying emission over North Vietnam and it is being guarded by two f4s then they're approached by two enemy mig-21s and the mig-21s go straight for the bomber and the bomber does a nosedive they're flying 30 000 feet the bomber takes a nosedive down to uh say ten thousand feet to get away from these migs but in the meantime here you have two migs two f4s and they're essentially alternating each other in a spiral down to ten thousand feet so you have bomber then you have the first Mig then the F4 another Mig and another F4 and they're spiraling down to the ground and uh the proximity the speed and the characteristics of the aircraft make it a in in some cases uh more difficult for a missile to be effective than hitting the Mig it gives the pilot a great deal more control in a situation like that to employ the tactics that have been learned in previous decades where they uh when they're flying and they anticipate the movement of the aircraft to flow into where the the stream of bullets are simply because you know in some cases there's only if you're in a spiral there's a limit for where you're going to go uh and that might be a bit of an oversimplification of it but that's one good example of actual combat where it certainly Justified having a gun and that's why the 20 millimeter cannon one of the reasons why the 20 millimeter cannon was put on the Phantom as mentioned eventually F4 Phantoms would be outfitted with cannons that played a major role in the success of the F4 as an interceptor up next at number two we will look at the first ever recorded aerial victory for the F4 but first let's test your knowledge and see if you already know it was the first air-to-air kill of the F4 Phantom a a mig-9 b a mig-15 C A MiG 17 or d a mig-21 the correct answer is c a mig-17 but the story is likely quite a bit more complicated than you might think this kill would take place on April 9th of 1965. in this Mission Terence Murphy and His Radio officer Ronald Fagan took off from the USS Ranger as part of a flight of f4s that were assigned to fly a patrol Mission over the Gulf of Tonkin at approximately 8 40 am the flight of phantoms engaged a group of mig-17 Fighters it would later be discovered that these were actually not North Vietnamese aircraft but Chinese migs apparently in the dogfight Murphy quickly pulled behind a MIG and fired a missile Downing the first fighter of the Vietnam War for the United States and the first kill attributed to the F4 but then after this something strange happened Murphy and his backseat are fagin were never heard from again there were never any reported sightings of their aircraft going down or being hit but they failed to check in with the flight leader after this engagement according to the records available there are two theories to their fate first it is very possible that they were immediately shot down by another one of the Chinese migs this is likely the most probable outcome according to most historians but there is also some evidence that suggests Murphy's F4 could have also been down by someone else a friendly F4 Phantom this is based on a report that was sent out by the Chinese shortly after that stated a U.S fighter was shot down by the missile of another U.S fighter it does however seem odd that the Chinese would lie about this as one would believe they would have preferred to claim that their own Pilots had scored a Kill but regardless Murphy and fagin were shot down and never heard from again despite a large search of two thousand square miles that lasted two days they were never recovered and their fate has never been definitively determined unfortunately as many details of this engagement are still classified we might not know for some time finally we will look at the last F4 Phantoms to see combat use this will be your final question so let's see if you can finish strong what nation is the last Nation to actually use the F4 Phantom in a combat role a Israel B Japan C Germany D Iran the correct answer here is surprisingly D Iran and impressively the F4 Phantom is actually still listed as an active combat Fighter for Iran and a few other smaller countries today placing the active service life of the Phantom at more than 60 years this most recent combat appearance made by the Phantom was in 2014 against Isis this would have likely never been made public were it not for a video that apparently captured an Iranian F4 bombing Isis positions in the brief clip of footage the plane can clearly be identified as an F4 Phantom interestingly although normally on opposing sides this battle with Isis meant that the United States and Iran would have a common enemy although not formerly allies the F4 Phantom in 2014 was still fighting against the enemies of the United States six decades after it first entered service don't forget to download War Thunder at the link below to join the best vehicle combat game around totally free a big thank you to Air Base Arizona here in Mesa for allowing us to get this beautiful commentary and information on these aircraft if you want to support what they do and thank them for helping to make this video possible use the link here and go check out their incredible Museum and get a ride on one of their warbirds today comment what plane I should cover next and please consider subscribing [Music]

Channel: TJ3 History

Views: 334,201

Keywords: f-4, f4 phantom, f4 vietnam, vietnam dogfights, f-4 documentary, f4 phantom dogfight, f4, mig-17, rexs hangar, dcs f-4, mig vs f4, 5 things you never knew, f-4 phantom, il-2 sturmovik, war thunder f-4, f-4 vietnam, il2, mig-21, flight sim, world war ii flight sim, il-2 great battles, il2 game, il-2 highlights, il-2 flight sim, combat flight sim, war thunder, history channel dogfights, historic, documentary, mark felton, yarnhub, tj3 gaming, dark skies, ww2 air combat

Id: lxvkg4h53yU

Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023