The Boeing Super Phantom; Making a Legend Even Greater

the mcdonald douglas f4 phantom 2 is a legend an extremely competent multi-role aircraft it was one of the few planes to serve with the united states navy marines and air force making the phantom one of the most important types to fly during the cold war indeed the phantom's widespread service flying with the air forces and navies of 12 countries made it the west's most potent combat aircraft in several strategically important locations and in multiple confrontations over a two decade period in terms of the technical advance the aircraft represented on its introduction into service in 1961 combined with its operational capabilities the sheer numbers produced and an extensive combat record the phantom has a solid claim to being one of the best combat aircraft ever built indeed you'll find some aviation historians that will argue that the aircraft ranks as the greatest fighter of all time of course such an aircraft saw a huge amount of development during its service career to be ranked so highly and the phantom was continuously upgraded throughout its lifespan a period that spans from the aircraft's first flight in 1958 until beyond the time this video went live yes phantoms are still in service with several countries and still in a frontline capacity at the time of recording and this in an aircraft that ended production in 1979 with a total of 5197 built naturally with the phantom being in such widespread service the end of production did not mean the end of upgrading and development efforts though mcdonald douglas stopped building new models other nations that relied on the f4 for their defense did update the design so that it could continue to meet their needs but interestingly the united states did not at least not to anything like the standards other nations planned which is a little surprising given the context because though the cold war ultimately meant that the f4 could be retired in the 1990s from u.s service that hadn't been the original expectation as the f4 was displaced by the newer teen series aircraft at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 80s the expectation was that the phantom would continue to serve in the u.s reserve and national guard fleets for possibly two more decades in fact in 1983 there were 885 f-4s serving in front-line usaf squadrons with another 649 in the air national guard plus additional hundreds with the reserves and though the united states was purchasing new f-14 and f-18s to replace the f4 with the navy and marine corps as well as f-15s and f-16s to do likeways with the air force it was still thought at the time that perhaps as many as 400 phantoms could still be serving in the national guard and reserves by the year 2000 by which point they would have been badly out of date in fact with around 2500 phantoms serving with u.s forces and important foreign allies in 1983 the prospect of the phantom becoming obsolete and still being in widespread service looked entirely likely and a matter of concern recognizing this prospect the department of defense began to mold the possibility of conducting a more thorough overhaul of the phantoms in service with a view to increasing their long-term viability and here they hit a bit of a snag the problem they faced was that none of the big u.s fighter manufacturers wanted the phantom to survive into anything like the long-term future in u.s service the original builder mcdonald douglas was happily building as many f-15s and f-18s as it could to replace the f4 in service with the us air force navy and marines grumman was building f-14s again the f-4's direct replacement for fleet air defense and general dynamics was built in the f-16 which would displace the f4 in its tactical strike role all of these manufacturers were planning on their new aircraft not just replacing the phantom but eventually bringing in newer models that would allow these earlier teen series aircraft to be replaced themselves in turn where they could fill the national guard reserve squadrons the other company that may have been capable of conducting a major update plan was northrop but at the time they were pushing their new f20 tiger shark extremely hard in a sales attempt to get it adopted in the air national guard and reserve fleets they also had high hopes of the f-20 becoming a primary export fighter to poor u.s allies around the globe something that modernized phantom would jeopardize so i wouldn't say it's accurate to say the major fighter builders had a cartel arrangement as regards to a major product improvement of the f4 but they did all have a vested interest in not seeing it happen such an aircraft would draw money from the us defense budget that would otherwise go to buying what was coming off their current production lines as well as jeopardising prospective foreign export sales but this didn't stop the department of defense primarily in the guise of under secretary of defense for research and technology richard de lauer they still wanted the possibility looked at and so they turned to a somewhat surprising at the time alternative boeing now boeing might be a big deal in the field now but at that point they hadn't built a fighter aircraft that had seen service since the p26p shooter which first flew in 1932 however boeing recognized an opportunity and in fact had already been acquired expertise on the f4 in june 1983 the boeing military airplane company bmac had won a contract over rival mcdonnell douglas to overhaul f4cs of the air national guard and air force reserve this saw bmac overhaul the aircraft thoroughly and this and the preliminary work that they had conducted in preparation for the bid meant that their engineers had as good as understanding of the phantom as any and so in september 1983 bmac offered to the dod the concept for a modernized f4 the boeing super phantom in fact three options were offered which would allow customers to customize the phantoms to as far as their requirements and wallets needed the first most basic was to replace the f4s j79 turbo jets with pratt whitney pw 1120 turbo fans this brand new engine that had only begun full testing a year before was a cutting-edge power plant that pratt whitney had developed for the israeli larvae light fighter project the 1120 also had the advantage of having 70 commonality with the f-100 engine that was used in the f-15 and f-16 additionally pratt and whitney had already considered the possibility of fitting the new engine to the f4 and working to assist any builder that wanted to market the match up with the new engine fit the f4 performance would have been much improved in contrast to the j79s which produced just under 18 000 pounds of thrust each the 1120 produced 20 600 pounds of thrust they also weighed a thousand pounds less than the older engine so a re-engined f4 would immediately lose nearly a ton in weight and have around 14 percent more power this would greatly improve the air force performance a phantom with 1120s would have a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1.03 to 1 only marginally below that of the f-15 eagle and significantly better than that of the major soviet fighters the aircraft would be expected to encounter this was expected by boeing to improve the aircraft's acceleration and turning circle making it an even more formidable dogfighter it would also have removed the infamous smoke trail that phantoms produced might seem like a minor point but in an air combat fight visibility and target acquisition are critical and smoky trails have the potential to give away an aircraft's position the second option involved fitting a conformal fuel tank as well as the new engines this was based on a 1978 exploratory project that boeing had conducted for the u.s air force to investigate the possibility of such an addition and that work was dusted off for the super phantom proposal the tank would have been streamlined into the f-4s belly and being capable of carrying 5000 liters 1 320 us gallons of fuel this would allow the phantom to dispense with the 2 700 liter belly tank that they generally carried on long missions but with the benefit of actually carrying a greater fuel load in a far more streamlined profile indeed the conformal tank almost matched the total external drop tankage that f4s could carry on their fuselage and two inner wing pilons which was around 6000 liters this meant that the super phantom could have freed up its two inner pylons for additional weapon carriage in comparison to the original f4 or else still carry the wing tanks for even greater range and the conformal tank would still have been fitted to carry weapon loads such as sparrow or the underdevelopment amram air-to-air missiles it would also have been possible to fit a flare decoy dispenser into the new fuselage as well again a useful combat addition one prospective customer for this configuration was britain's royal air force who were using phantoms for long-range defense of the north sea and still a few years away from getting their tornado f3 interceptors that were being built for the role the third proposed upgrade option was to completely overhaul the phantom's electronic suite to make it as formidable as anything flying at the time this would have seen the radar switched out from whatever was fitted in the aircraft at the time for the apg-65 that was being fitted to the early models of the f-18 hornet just then coming into service though this radar seems to have been the preferred option by boeing and indeed would eventually be fitted to phantoms in german and greek service they also apparently considered offering the option of fitting the apg-66 that was used on the f-16 either these modern multi-mode radars would have been a considerable improvement on the various old types used on the various f4 models of the time offering far superior capabilities and the possibility of integrating with the latest weapons of the day as well as those projected for the future boeing also proposed installing the wide-angle heads-up display used on the f-16 as well as two of the multi-function display screens used by the aircraft as well as the navigation system and avionics processors used by the f-20 all of this was combined with a thorough airframe overhaul that would extend the aircraft service life by between 2000 and 3000 hours that equates to about 10 to 15 years in frontline us service so maybe a bit longer in national guard or reserve use and the price of this upgrade well that's where it all got a bit contentious boeing informed the dod that they could perform the full upgrade had a cost of seven to nine million dollars per aircraft with cost scalings from more conversions pushing the lower price the dod liked that and asked the u.s air force to look at the proposals with a mine to start initial development work principally in the fitting of a pw1120 to an f4 for trials and the usaf basically went no they were not at all happy at the idea of taking aging airframes and reconditioning them as they put it an old f4 even updated was still an old aircraft they also disputed that the cost would come in at nine million dollars instead projecting that the price of a super phantom would actually be 17 million per unit as at the time they were buying brand new f-16s at a fly away cost of 13 million they weren't inclined to spend money on old planes when they could get new ones for less they also pointed out that every new f-15 and f-16 purchased drove the cost of these their new current frontline fighters down further so they were inclined to agree with the manufacturers the export sales of the fighters on the production line would also provide savings on current u.s military purchase plans something that upgrading the phantom would not it was quite frankly a bit of a row it is difficult to say which side was correct in their assessment many phantom users did transition to teen series aircraft as their f4s aged proving the air force correct in that regard but several operators did as said upgrade their phantoms turning these last operating stalwarts into even more formidable aircraft had boeing been given the green light and received more support would these conversions have been undertaken in the united states generating more work for the american defense industry possibly but ultimately the super phantom vanished into history another interesting what if a huge thanks to mike lombardi at boeing for providing me with the information that i used to make this video hope everyone found it interesting and check out some of these links for the stories on some similar aircraft

Channel: Ed Nash's Military Matters

Views: 202,697

Keywords: F-4, Phantom II, Boeing, Air National Guard, Super Phantom, Enhanced Phantom, Mike Lombardi

Id: 2yDFI4tPmgg

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2022