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Happy 55th birthday for a
dear friend!
It was a warm spring day on the 27th
May in St. Louis, 55 years ago, when the F-4 Phantom II took to the
skies for the first time.
With a 23 year production run of over 5,000 and a long operational
history spanning more than five decades, this month we
celebrate the 55th anniversary of the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom II.
With a few hundred still in service today it is a truly remarkable
airplane and we are still impressed every time we see one in operation.
In Europe three air forces still fly the F-4: Germany, Greece and
Turkey. Turkey has disbanded several squadrons in past years and
more to come this June. Germany will retire their F-4F’s on 30th June
2013 and a pharewell is already planned. Once the backbone of USAF/E in
the seventies and eighties, now about to be retired in Europe.
In Asia, Japan and South-Korea still
operate the F-4 in considerable numbers. In the Middle East there are
also two survivors: Egypt and Iran.
Egypt supposedly has two units at Cairo West with 222 Wing and Iran even
has up to eight units left, keeping their US-embargoed aircraft flying
through reverse engineering of spare parts.
Of the original 11 non-US Phantom users, only six will remain by the end
of this year. In the US, only drone-converted F-4s are operational and
the final lot of 14 aircraft is about to be used by 2014. More than 300
F-4s have been converted into QF-4 full-scale aerial drones for target
practice since 1996.
The F-4 has been called many names, but
a fighter aircraft that is celebrated as an operational asset at 40+
years deserves the name ‘remarkable’ at least.
As long as the F-4 keeps on smoking we will travel the world and enjoy
its presence. We will have to wait and see if it is flying by 2018, but
with a Spook you can never tell...
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