McDonnell Douglas F-4
Designed initially as a high-altitude interceptor, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II quickly proved exceptional, setting more than a dozen world records for speed, altitude, and time to climb. It was unusual in that it had no internal cannon, instead depending on radar-guided missiles and a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) to manage its advanced sensors and weapons.
The aircraft first flew in 1958, and deliveries to Navy and Marine Corps squadrons began in 1960. Its speed and versatility soon drew interest from the US Air Force and ten foreign air forces, making it one of the most widely used aircraft in aviation history.
For more than 20 years, the F-4 was the top air superiority fighter for both the Navy and the Air Force, and it also flew with the Blue Angels and the Air Force Thunderbirds.
Not very challenging
While there is no doubt about the aircraft’s tremendous capabilities, was there anything negative about the iconic F-4 Phantom?
Robert James, a former US Navy F-4 Phantom II pilot, explains on Quora;
“The F-8 Crusader was the aircraft I flew the most, but I did fly several variations of the Phantom, including several Navy models as well as the F-4E (an Air Force variant). The F-4 was easy to fly, particularly during carrier approaches. It was strong and could withstand hard landings and in-flight over-stress abuse without problems; it was fast with pretty good takeoff and landing performance, although the brakes were perhaps not as good as they could have been, and most field landings required the use of a drag chute.”
“It had a pair of J-79 engines, which had variable stator blades, and that resulted in very good throttle response. In other words, when you needed a touch of additional thrust to adjust your sink rate, you had it right now and without delay. That was not true of most other airplanes at the time. The Phantom had plenty of power too.”
“All in all, it was not very challenging when it came to basic flying. Two exceptions were how it took a cat shot and how to achieve the best rate of turn during air combat maneuvering. The nose strut had to be overinflated to cock the airplane up to increase the angle of attack during the cat stroke. Even so, it was always a little bit sketchy on the cat. Most other aircraft of the time took great cat shots but were more challenging to land. The other thing that took some time to master was finding just the right amount of backstick to achieve the best rate of turn.”
ACM
“On many aircraft, you will experience the onset of airframe buffet, called the ‘nibble,’ as you are producing the best turn rate. It’s when you pull back the stick just to the point where you can feel the airframe begin to shake a tiny bit. That kind of physical feedback is nice. The F-4 doesn’t have that characteristic. Its best rate of turn is achieved at an angle of attack lower than that required to achieve that ‘nibble,’ i.e., airframe buffet. You can use the angle of attack indicator to help learn the best AOA for max turn rate, but it takes a little getting used to, and looking into the cockpit during a dogfight is likely to compromise your fighting ability.”
“Beginners practicing ACM (air combat maneuvering) in the F-4 typically don’t win their first few fights. But after a while, you develop a feel for it, and the Phantom can perform quite well in the ACM role. The idea that it’s some sort of ‘flying brick’ is a myth perpetuated mostly by people who have never flown it.”
“Unfortunately, many of the systems that made the F-4 perform well also added complexity, and with increasing complexity comes reduced reliability. For instance, in order to make the approach speed as slow as possible for carrier ops, they used boundary layer control on the wing. Hot engine air is piped through tubes inside the wing, and when these tubes leak a little bit, you get a warning, which requires an immediate mission abort and possibly an emergency landing.”
Boundary layer duct
“If the hot air leak was a bit more serious, your wing burst into flames, and you jumped out. Boundary layer duct hot air leaks and/or warnings were not uncommon, and a nasty wing fire was always a possibility. Most other aircraft at the time didn’t have BLC ducting in the wings, so they didn’t have that fire potential. And those other airplanes with BLC featured systems that were better designed than that of the F-4, so that they didn’t suffer from the same problems.”
He continues,
“I’ve already mentioned the drag chute for landing. It was something of a PITA for everyone involved, and many would argue the design choice to go with the chute was a poor decision in the long run.”
“The variable stator blades in the engine, which make the throttle response so nice, were also complicated. The linkage required for this system is a thing of beauty, but not simple at all. They say the old J-57 could eat a bowling ball and hardly burp. But a good-sized hummingbird would completely trash the much more delicate J-79 in the Phantom. That’s an overstatement, of course, but you get the point. And since the engines were close together, often a failure of one engine meant the adjacent engine was damaged when the first one started coming apart, negating much of the theoretical advantage of a twin-engine aircraft.”
The worst flight control system ever put in an airplane
“Finally, the F-4 had the worst flight control system ever put in an airplane. It had addition after addition piled on patch after patch in order to make the system work. A failure of one of the many components in the pitch feel system could lead to the loss of the airplane. In other airplanes of the same era, it was usually just an irritation to have a single failure of the pitch feel system. During a low-level high-speed record attempt in the F-4, the pitch damper failed, and the airplane went into a violent uncontrolled pitch oscillation, which instantly turned the airplane into confetti after about one and a half cycles.”
“The dramatic film shows the engines separating from a cloud of aluminum and continuing on their own out over the horizon all because of a simple failure of one secondary system: pitch feel. And in spite of all the flight control gimmicks, they never did get the feel system just right, and the F-4 was not a great formation airplane. It felt something like a worn-out dump truck in formation when compared with the sweetest formation airplane I ever flew, the F11F Tiger.”
“I think most people would agree that the F-4 was not an elegant design. After a lot of work by a lot of designers, they finally came up with an airplane that could be MADE to fly even though it didn’t have much natural flying ability built into it, if you get what I’m trying to say. It’s as if the designers used a crayon rather than a drafting pen when they did the initial drawings.”
McDonnell Douglas design of the F-4
“Overall, though, it was certainly not a failure, and the Phantom went on to become a real workhorse for the Air Force, the Navy, the Marines, and many foreign air forces. Flown properly, it could hold its own in a dogfight and was really the only game in town when it came to having a genuine head-on capability against enemy bombers and fighters back in the day. Plus, it could haul bombs pretty well too. It was versatile and could do almost everything, but it didn’t do anything in a nice or natural way.”
“Both the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds tried it as a flight demonstration airplane, but it proved to be too expensive, too unreliable, and rather dangerous in that mission, and they didn’t last long in that role. In the F-4 days, you didn’t have to go to too many air shows before you got to see an F-4 wind up in a big ball of fire.”
James concludes,
“Bottom line: The overall design of the F-4 was quite complicated and not executed well by McDonnell Douglas. It suffered to some degree because of that; however, it turned out to be quite a good airplane when it was all said and done. Having said that, imagine how great the F-4 would have been had Grumman won the contract.”
Photos by U.S. Navy
