McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II

That looks like it came straight of the St. Louis flight line to go through conversion at Mojave? Single piece windshield too.

I thought it might have as well but it went to AMARC in Sept 91 so 2 years before. Looks like it never went into deep storage though.

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March AFB in Oct 89, on my first solo trip to the US I called into the base museum which used to occupy a section of the flightline so you could easily access the base, I drummed up the courage to walk into the 196th TFS building and ask if I could go out and shoot their F-4s, life was so much less complicated back then.

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The pair of SEA camo 20th FS F-4Es at the Golden Air Tattoo at Nellis in 1997. Flown by Vietnam aces Steve Richie and Chuck DeBellevue.

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Oooh. Sweet. They look weird though, without fuel tanks under their wings or center line.

It’s how you want it for a flying display though! 337 was nicely kitted out for the static.

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True. So where are the shots of the flying display? :wink:

It’s flying in one of the shots! Limited flying shots to conserve film!

Ha! Forgot about that. Really good scans make you forget these are slides from precious 36 exposure rolls.

Yeah, I had a lot of trip left to do, plus we take long lens photography for granted now with digital, when 300mm was 300mm with film and no cropping, and Nellis is backlit most of the day!

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slow times here aviation wise, some mid 80’s F-4’s seen at Soesterberg ab will do i hope…

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Yep, that’ll do! Superb, when jets were jets!

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Agreed Kev. You can beat Cold War era jets.

Darren

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Two shots from the heritage demo at Nellis back in the day.


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Phantom friday!

This Greek F-4 was departing RIAT’23, just to come back 1 1/2 hour later, because it was not allowed to fly over France…

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Any idea why it wasn’t allowed to fly over France?

dont know, but i’ve heard France was a pain in the ass in earlier editions of planes flying home from RIAT…

May 16th 1984, Soesterberg air base,

Ramstein 512th TFS bird…

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Oooh yes! What a bird!

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Here’s a QF-4G in maintenance at Holloman AFB.

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