Monday, January 17, 2022

Colorful But Deadly

 


I guess Japan just retired their last ones, although Iran may still have a few airworthy F4's.

12 comments:

  1. Art static or kinetic. Beautiful!

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  2. Not positive but they may still exist in Greek and Turkish inventories. Used to see F-4's all the time when I was a kid - I remember when the Thunderbirds actually flew them - what an impression they made.

    It was a shock to see F-16's and fighters of that generation zipping along without huge smoke trails behind them. Decades later I was out for a run in Greece when I heard the familiar sound, looked up and saw those wings and all that smoke. It must've been thirty years since I had seen an F-4, aside from some gate guards here and there, but I remember thinking [while wheezing along], "As old as that thing is...it's better maintained than I am."

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  3. F4`s were proof you could make a brick fly with enough power.

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  4. Proof that given sufficient thrust, a brick can fly.

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  5. Anonymous, MarkD, take away the power and the F-4 and the brick had pretty much the same glide characteristics.

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  6. The world's leading distributor of used MIG parts.

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  7. As big of maintenance hog that they were, it's hard to believe Iran has flyable ones without a major rebuild or most systems not functioning. We had issues in the 80s trying to get some parts.

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  8. Never worked on them, but I served with guys that did. The most requested tool they wanted added to their tool boxes was a can opener so they could get access to the components. For example to change a generator you had to remove an engine.

    heard a story that there was FTD course for battle damage repair. to get damage to repair they would have an auction, the winner got three swings with a fire axe any where they wanted on the sheet metal. The training detachment was never lacking for funds given how high the bids went.

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  9. It's doubtful the Iranian ones are anything but magnets for rust or cruise missiles, at this point. They haven't had any proper parts available for over four decades.

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  10. My favorite nickname for the F4 comes from the German Luftwaffe: Luftverteidigungsdiesel ("Air Defense Diesel")

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  11. There is one for sale at Controller.com for 1.5 Million. 1954 edition I believe

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