Luftwaffe's Last Phantoms

[willedoo]

The Luftwaffe Jagdgeschwader 71 Fighter Wing is Germany's last Wing operating the F-4F Phantom, due for retirement next year. The military aviation magazine, 'Combat Aircraft Monthly', of the Key Aero network, has flown a photoshoot with JG 71 Wing & will publish a feature & photos in the August issue.

 

It might be good reading for any Phantom fans out there.

 

Here's a link to their website.

 

http://www.combataircraft.net/

 

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Cheers, Willie.

 

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[siznaudin]

And I see that F4's are still good enough to continue in service with Turkey .. as long as they're not shot down by trigger-happy Syrians...

 

 

[willedoo]

And I see that F4's are still good enough to continue in service with Turkey .. as long as they're not shot down by trigger-happy Syrians...

Hopefully they got to eject ok, latest news quotes both navies as carrying out a joint search for the crew. It's bad luck, probably wouldn't happen normally if Syria wasn't as edgy as they are at the moment.

 

Good to see so many Phantoms still in service after all these years, in Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Iran & others. Sadly it won't last too much longer with all the retirement plans kicking in over the next two or three years. I'm guessing that Iran will end up being the last operator of the F-4, based on the assumption that they would keep what they can flying as long as they can. One consolation might be that the sheer numbers of them around the world might produce quite a lot of static museum displays in the future.

 

Fingers crossed, we might get to see the RAAF survivor brought back to Amberley one day soon.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

[willedoo]

One of the Luftwaffe F-4's is to attend RAF Waddington Airshow next weekend.

 

http://www.key.aero/view_news.asp?ID=5215&thisSection=military

 

 

[siznaudin]

Hopefully they got to eject ok, latest news quotes both navies as carrying out a joint search for the crew. It's bad luck, probably wouldn't happen normally if Syria wasn't as edgy as they are at the moment.Good to see so many Phantoms still in service after all these years, in Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Iran & others. Sadly it won't last too much longer with all the retirement plans kicking in over the next two or three years. I'm guessing that Iran will end up being the last operator of the F-4, based on the assumption that they would keep what they can flying as long as they can. One consolation might be that the sheer numbers of them around the world might produce quite a lot of static museum displays in the future.

 

Fingers crossed, we might get to see the RAAF survivor brought back to Amberley one day soon.

 

Cheers, Willie.

Static museum display..? Like this one? - or is this the spare parts repository for Iran ... although given the US:Iran relationship I wouldn't think so;)

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*ps ... a friend who was flight engineer in C class and Mariners in WW2, on seeing a Phantom display at an airshow when Aus had 'em on lease, expressed the view that they had all the flying qualities of a building brick (albeit very high powered).

 

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[willedoo]

a friend who was flight engineer in C class and Mariners in WW2, on seeing a Phantom display at an airshow when Aus had 'em on lease, expressed the view that they had all the flying qualities of a building brick (albeit very high powered).

They were often referred to as the 'Flying Brick'. Some pilots joked that it didn't matter whether you were flying sideways or straight ahead, the handling was equally bad. Another common one was that the F-4 was proof that a brick could fly given enough thrust.

 

McDonnell had to pull a lot of rabbits out of the hat during the design and development stage to get it to fly, with the help of BuAer's input as well. Some of the main concerns were roll coupling, pitch up at supersonic speeds, low speed stability and the spin characteristics.

 

They designed 75 different wings and found only one resisted pitch up, hence the saw tooth on the outer leading edge. Part of the roll stability was to be provided by a six degree wing dihedral, but when the airframe was reviewed it was found to have negative dihedral due to the design of the main spar. By this stage the wing spar was already committed to production, so the outer wing was cranked up twelve degrees to give the whole wing an effective three degrees dihedral. Another method to control roll was the use of an automatic stability augmentation system to dampen aileron and rudder input. The twenty three degree anhedral on the tail complimented the wing to provide more roll stability.

 

Low speed stability issues were adressed by the addition of a boundary layer control system with ducted air to the leading edge and trailing edge wing flaps. The ducts terminated in slots which were blocked off by the flaps in the up position. Lowering the flaps exposed the slots and via a mechanical linkage from the flaps, actuated the valves to allow hot pressurized air from the compressor to flow over the wing and flaps, delaying flow separation. The use of BLC was mainly due to it being primarily a Naval aircraft. The Navy influence carried on right through production, an example being that all F-4's built had folding wings.

 

A fair amount of the design process seemed to be a bit of cut and paste. Aerodynamically, it really is a brick with just enough gadgets attached to make it fly. They say it still has to be treated with a lot of respect, particularly in regard to adverse yaw getting out of control.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

[siznaudin]

Thanks for all that Willie ... what an animal of an aircraft!