The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom was the workhorse of the U.S. military during its operational lifetime. First introduced in 1961, it served the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force until the mid-1990s. There’s a reason the United States built more F-4s than any other supersonic aircraft. F-4s were the go-to fighters over Vietnam, the only … Continued
The air-to-air missiles of the F-4 Phantom II were notoriously unreliable in the skies over Vietnam. If the Phantom a pilot was flying was an early model and those missiles failed them in a dogfight, it was time to hightail it out of the sky. Luckily for Col. Phil “Hands” Handley, he was flying a … Continued
An Israeli pilot only known as “Lt. H” was flying at a low level near 350 knots in an A-4 Skyhawk one day. He was flying over the desert near the Dead Sea in September 1985. He was flying straight and level when the next thing he knows he is layin…
It could be argued that the history of aviation spans thousands of years, but in the last generation alone, mankind has developed technology that has allowed humanity to not only take flight, but to accomplish powerful feats of aerodynamic speed, di…