Pontius Navigator
Fast, rugged, good radar, huge load carrier.
It's performance compared pretty well to the F-106 actually. The F-106A was undoubtedly more elegant and beautiful in appearance (and slightly faster at top-end speed), but the F-4B had a greater intercept radius (750 nm vs 650 nm), a faster climb-rate (
AFAIK).
The F-4B's radar boasted 25% greater range than the F-106A and was more reliable; it's two man crew reduced workload and didn't require a lot of the automation the F-102A and F-106A did.
I don't know how the F-4E's radar compared to the F-4B's, whether it was inferior, the same, superior, etc, but they were still used as interceptors by NORAD and ANG units, and I think it had an even greater intercept radius than the F-4B/C (786 nm vs ~ 750 nm).
In RAF service it could carry 9x1000lbs or bombs and the SUU.
Well, technically the plane was physically capable of carrying up to 22,500 pounds of payload; operationally, it was restricted to around 16,700. I don't know if an F-4 ever carried 16,000 pounds of
bombs, but if the RAF was carrying 9,000 pounds of bombs, 2 x 450 gallon tanks and an SUU, you would probably be right up on the limit.
brickhistory
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.
Yeah, the F-4 had a number of ugly characteristics. Substantial adverse yaw due to it's ailerons
(which for some reason only deflected down) combined with reduced rudder effectiveness under high g-loads was one problem, I think it had bad stall characteristics too
(I'm not sure, but I remember something mentioned about a post-stall gyration).
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.
Actually, that might have been the reason the USN never developed an F-4 variant with a gun. Over the nose visibility is particularly important for carrier operations.
gibbo568
I seem to remember that the flaps would retract automatically at this speed too, if they had been forgotten by the pilot!
You sure you're not mixing the F-4 up with the F-15? They had a "blow-up" feature whereby the flaps would retract as the plane accelerated.