"Another pilot, then Captain Dave Lucia, and the last pilot to go through Weasel training described what it was like checking out in the F-4G:
I came to George following a tour as an ALO (air liaison officer – a USAF fighter pilot assigned to a US Army combat unit) with the 82d Airborne Division. I had jumped into Panama as part of Operation Just Cause and was ready to get back into a cockpit.
Since I hadn’t flown the F-4 before (I’d been an OA-37 and OV-10 forward air control pilot prior to going to the Army), I had to learn to fly the F-4E at the 21st TFTS there at George. My first flight was just a few days before DESERT SHIELD kicked off.
Compared to more modern jets like the F-16, the F-4 was like an old Cadillac. After cranking engines, the air conditioner wouldn’t work until you were airborne so we did all our ground ops with the canopies up. I’d run the seat up to where I could look over the top of the canopy bow and feel the breeze in my face. That was a great feeling.
Another difference about the F-4 was that once airborne, it talked to you. You had to listen to what it was telling you. You could hear the wind noise change around the canopy as you maneuvered the jet. You could feel it start to shake if you started pushing it beyond its limits. If you kept pushing, it could get away from you and stall.
I always felt that the F-4 required more pure airmanship – the skills needed to fly the jet smoothly – than does the F-16 where the computer does a lot of the work for you.
Ergonomically, the F-4’s cockpit was horrible. The visibility was not very good. The side of the jet was about level with your shoulders so to see down or back you had to roll it to see.
The lights could be so bright on a night sortie that you put tape over them to blank them out. We stowed our stuff in various places, wherever there was room. I’d tuck my charts into the sides of the front instrument panel coaming. I’d throw my helmet bag with snacks and water and other junk in the space to the sides of the ejection seat.
Another aspect that took some getting used to was having another guy fly with you. Although I really learned to like the crew concept, at first it was strange. When first flying with a backseater, I tended to be more formal and use the checklists words, but once you got to know each other, you could tell what the other was thinking by just a grunt or a single word.
Even landing the massive Phantom presented challenges according to Lucia,
The forward viz in the F-4 was never great. With the [gun]sight, canopy framing and the ‘Rhino’s’ long nose, it was nearly impossible to see ahead. During the landing, I’d again run my seat up as high as it would go to be able to see just a little straight ahead.
You could feel it as you got into ground effect and could touch down really smoothly most times. When it was raining, however, I always planted it firmly to avoid the risk of hydroplaning. (The F-4, due to the nearly perfectly triangular positioning of the nose and main landing gear developed a reputation for this).
Almost always, I got some sort of comment from the backseat about my landing.
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Although he did not fly one of the F-4G’s to Bahrain, Dave Lucia described his technique for taking gas thusly:
In the F-4, the canopy bow was right in your line of sight for looking at the tanker and gauging your reference points. I’d run my seat up higher than normal to be able to see over the bow just prior to the AAR (air to air refueling).
I’d move into pre-contact position about 50 feet below the tanker, matching the tankers speed and heading, then once stabilized and cleared into contact either via the radio if in peacetime or via visual signals if working under EMCON (emission conditions – no radio transmissions).
The boomer would then plug into the jet and I’d adjust my rearview mirror on the canopy bow to see the ‘apple,’ a bright orange plastic ball on the boom just ahead of the end of the boom itself. If I kept that centered in the mirror, I knew I stayed within the limits of the boom and could stay on there with constant, minor control inputs.
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Some of the tricks Schreiner used to get gas were similar.
I’d run my seat up high to see the director lights above the bow and use the mirrors to fly the apple. Unfortunately for me, when I ran the seat up, it was hard for me to reach the rudder pedals.
If I was down to around 3,000lbs of fuel (aircraft fuel is measured in pounds, not gallons. This convention makes it easier to do fuel burn/flight time remaining calculations vital to the relatively short-legged fighters) it could take nearly ten minutes to fill both the internal and three external ‘bags.’
I’d have to keep trimming during that time as the AOA (angle of attack – essentially the angle between where the wing is pointing and where it is going) keeps increasing.
Eventually, the AOA could become so great that the leading edge slats (airfoils on the outer leading edges of the F-4s wing, used to increase lift at slow speeds) would deploy automatically. Because they deployed so quickly, the jet’s pitch changed drastically and it was easy to overcorrect into a PIO (pilot induced oscillation) and fall off the boom. Since getting gas and getting out of the way so the next guy could plug in is your goal, this is not a good thing to have happen.
I’d usually manually lock the slats in prior to AAR to avoid that happening. I learned about that the hard way during the war. Nobody had told me about it, and I’d never taken on that much gas during training so didn’t see it then either.
Anyway, as we got topped off, the three ‘full’ lights on the canopy bow would illuminate once the externals were full and they didn’t fill until the internal tanks were full, so you knew you were crammed with as much as you could take. Once I got the three lights, I’d disconnect and drop down to assume tactical formation again off the tanker’s wing."