F-4 Phantom II - Vietnam
The only Air Force fighter that could better handle North Vietnamese air defenses than the F-105 Thud was the newer, more maneuverable McDonnell F–4 Phantom II (a descendant of the Navy’s first carrier jet fighter, the McDonnell FH–1 Phantom of the late 1940s). “Phantom” was a most unsuitable name for this big twoengine fighter known for leaving a highly visible trail of black smoke. Only by using its afterburners could the F–4 avoid the smoke that in daylight continually gave the plane’s position away. Nevertheless, “Phantom” was one of the few official names that aircrews actually used. The Phantom did get most of the night bombing missions, for which its two-man crew was better suited than a lone Thud pilot. Someone caught the humor in the name “Phantom” by drawing a cartoon of a funny little man (with the delta shape of the fighter) wearing a cape, broad-brimmed hat, and tennis shoes. In their daytime air-to-air combat with enemy fighters, Phantom aircrews had to resign themselves to the fact that there was nothing stealthy about their plane.
Although nearly as heavy as the single-engine Thud, the Phantom’s two engines and bigger wings permitted it to climb faster—a virtue that came at the price of higher fuel consumption and shorter range. In one respect, the Phantom was less well prepared for air-to-air combat than the Thud, for early in the war the Phantom had no gun. The Navy had developed the Phantom to protect the fleet with radar-guided Sparrow missiles that could down attacking aircraft at long range—usually more than a mile—if the radar could be kept “locked on” the target during a missile’s entire flight. Over North Vietnam, however, ground clutter could interfere with the radar guidance system; in any case, the presence of so many Navy and Air Force planes obliged aircrews to identify an enemy aircraft visually before attacking—often putting the Phantom too close to use a Sparrow effectively. Despite the ability of the Phantom’s heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles to find an enemy plane’s tailpipe at fairly close range, Phantom crews sometimes found themselves too close for anything but the gun they did not have. Not until 1967 would Air Force F–4s begin to use a gun mounted in a pod under the fuselage, and only as Rolling Thunder ended in 1968 would new F–4s with a built-in gun deploy to Southeast Asia.
While most Thuds had only one seat, each Phantom had two on the theory that a second crew member was required to operate the plane’s radar; he would try to lock his radar on an enemy fighter so that the Phantom’s pilot could fire a Sparrow missile. The Navy gave this backseat job to a navigator called a “radar intercept operator.” During Rolling Thunder, the Air Force gave the radar job to a second pilot, but no pilot liked to ride in the back seat and the Air Force ultimately followed the Navy’s example. The Air Force’s backseat navigator would be called officially a “weapon system officer” (WSO, pronounced “wizzo”), because he often handled not only air-to-air missile radar but also the new precision bombing systems that were developed late in the war. Unofficially, he would assume the nicknames of the backseat pilot who preceded him: “guy in back (GIB)” or simply “backseater.” The fact that the Air Force’s Phantom backseaters were originally pilots may have made other fighter pilots somewhat less hostile to giving backseaters equal credit with the frontseat pilot for any enemy aircraft shot down. Shooting down at least five enemy aircraft had long been a milestone in a fighter pilot’s career, for then he was called an “ace.”
When the war finally produced its first American aces in 1972, all Phantom backseaters were navigators and three of them (two Air Force, one Navy) became aces. At the beginning of Rolling Thunder, the Air Force had about six hundred Thuds and six hundred Phantoms. The production line for the single-seat Thud had closed, but the Air Force received more than two hundred new two-seat Phantoms every year. While a portion of the growing Phantom force was used for less risky bombing in South Vietnam, Thuds were reserved for the more dangerous missions in North Vietnam and Laos. Not only were most Thuds older than most Phantoms, but the loss of a single-seat Thud cost at most one crew member rather than two. Air Force Phantoms operating in North Vietnam were expected to protect Thuds from North Vietnamese fighter aircraft; this less expensive mission absorbed much of the Phantom effort there during Rolling Thunder. When Rolling Thunder ended in 1968, more than half the Thuds were gone, and most of the remainder were soon replaced by Phantoms.
When the Air Force Phantoms were first deployed to Southeast Asia in 1965, runways had to be lengthened at two bases in northeast Thailand near the Mekong. At first, the Phantom’s reconnaissance version (the RF–4) shared Udorn with RF–101s and F–104s, but these older aircraft were entirely replaced by more RF–4s and F–4s in 1967. Two hundred miles down the Mekong from Udorn, Ubon became the principal Phantom base in Thailand. Another two hundred miles east of Ubon across the Laotian panhandle in South Vietnam, Da Nang’s Phantoms could be used in North Vietnam and Laos as well as South Vietnam. Altogether, the three bases had about ninety F–4s and twenty RF–4s in 1966; in subsequent years the Phantom presence in Thailand would grow. Of the more than five hundred Air Force F–4s and RF–4s lost in Southeast Asia, two-thirds were shot down over North Vietnam and Laos.
Many of the Phantom and Thud losses could be attributed to two poor design features they shared. At the beginning of Rolling Thunder, neither type of fighter had self-sealing fuel tanks and both had hydraulic control systems with backup lines close enough together that a single hit could render the aircraft uncontrollable or cause the fuel tank to explode. Self-sealing fuel tanks were heavier, and aircraft designers tried to save weight in these already heavy aircraft by using lighter tanks. While some Thuds eventually got self-sealing 8Puzzle fuel tanks and a more survivable arrangement of their control systems, the Phantoms kept the maneuverability afforded by their lighter, more vulnerable fuel tanks. Late-model Phantoms did benefit from the addition of a backup electrical system for pitch control.
Men shot down had a better than even chance of surviving. About a third were rescued in North Vietnam, and almost as many survived years of captivity there. More were rescued in Laos, where lighter air defenses threatened rescue aircraft less, and friendly as well as enemy forces were on the ground. But during the prisoner exchange in 1973, only thirteen Americans captured in Laos would come home. Of the more than five hundred Air Force men shot down there, about a third met a fate unknown; some may have been killed by Laotian communist troops, for whom prisoners were too much trouble, or by North Vietnamese communist troops who were pretending not to be in Laos.
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