It did talk back (if it judders, use the rudders) but some numpties still ignored it. I did witness a rapid, oscillating, rotating descent (also known as a spin) due to some aileron input at high AoA and low speed. Said jet eventually made a recovery without popping the 'chute. Said driver received a very hard kick up the arse on dismount.

Exmil:

There are a couple of ex-F4 backseaters flying for Eastern - they must've watched a few and thought that was what was supposed to happen!

Nice piccies but, if you don't have broadband, it takes ages to open this page. Maybe after this post they will be on a preceding page!

Anybody remember this 228 OCU (64R Sqn) song - sung with feeling every Friday after a bad week to the tune of 'both sides now'.

Six o'clock the morning light
Is lost amidst the gloom of night
When I get up to brief the flight
That will not go this day

And at command they're doing fine
They don't come in 'till half past nine
To pass their problems down the line
Lest work should spoil their day

I've seen my studes from both sides now
From dim and thick and still somehow
It's all the dim ones I recall
They simply have no brains at all.

Wish I could remember the rest.

Words written by staff nav Jim McRoberts, I think about 1971. Original music was written by Joan Collins and called "Both sides now."
One of Jim's sage Scottish sayings was:
"Flying's perfectly safe as long as you remember it's dangerous."

Both Sides Now
 

Blaireau,

I think there is a misprint in your post. Joni Mitchel wrote the words and music, Judi Collins had a hit with it initially, and Joan Collins sufffered from Leonard Rossiter-induced CAT when flying.....

:ok: :ok:

Does anybody have any good examples of Phantom songs worth posting? It was great fun taking the p!** at H-hour.

There was one particuler series of events at Leuchars: a wheels up roller (spectacular - I was 100 yards away), accidental CL tank jettison, mid-air heavy petting with a canberra (night ECM) resulting in loss of tip tank. All of these were included in a song penned (I think) by Simpo and put to the tune of Four Wheels on My Wagon (no wheels on my Phantom, when there ought to be 3 etc). We ended up in a bit of a scuffle when some felt it was a bit too cutting.

Shame the F 4-1 culture is so dull - they can't even remember general banter stuff like "If I was a Jag Mate", "Don't Bend Down.." etc.

The Jag mate saga started, so rumour hath it, during a 31 Sqn Cyprus det. It seems that someone with a bit too much Kokkinelli aboard swayed back to the blocks, mis-ID'd his pit and climbed into the wrong bed. Which was already occupied by the rightful snoozer...

This was before Pink Wednesday when poovery was most definitely a chucking-out offence in the mil. So the saga became more and more colourful as time went by and the 'Jag mate' rumour became more and more exaggerated. No opportunity was lost - the roof of the old Troodos OM bar which always had signed handprints in soot on it acquired a neat little pair of footprints in 'close line astern' captioned '31 (Fudge packing) Sqn', there was a 6 sqn reunion notice up in the OM foyer in Leuchars to which someone had added a new paragraph: "8. Gays welcome" - it went unnoticed for quite a while! Even tanker mates got in on the act, "Clear astern the centre" was often called in a somewhat camp voice to 31 sqn mates during AAR...

No doubt these days such banter would be pounced upon by the PC nazis as being discriminatory and likely to be construed as causing harassment to those of a particular bent.......sorry, 'persuasion'.

By the time I heard this one it was Deci and definitely not a 'mis-ID'.....hmmmmmm! But it was 31 after all so it all made sense.

Actually, Deci seems more likely - co-located ACMI and APC dets.

I'm pretty certain that it was a mis-ID'd pit - but not 100%! Anyway, never let the truth get in the way of a good rumour!

I've no idea who the apocryphal 'Jag Mate' actually was - but if he was KIA in GW1, then of course my commiserations to his family and friends.

Never believed all the rumours - I thought it was all just heavy banter after mis-ID'ing his pit when under the affluence of incohol. It didn't really go to CM, did it??

This is the Mighty F4 forum. No more talk of Poofters, please.

Hear hear Maxburner! No poofters!

I do remember these 2 little ditties:

Rolling down the runway,
Throttles open wide,
See the mighty Phantom -
It sways from side to side.
Airborne again, without a blip -
It's just one more aborted trip
But we're pressing on regardless
For the Wing Commander's AFC

OR

F-4Ms are rocket ships,
They are flown by red-hot !!!!s
And they make a mighty noise
RROOAARR!! [Sung with deep masculine voices]

Jaguars are Dinky toys,
They are flown by little boys
And they make a funny noise
Wheeeeeeee! [Sung with somewhat weedy high-pitched, preferably effeminate voices]

Now, pass the kokkinelli

Seem to remember composing another verse to the above:

Flying over Yorkshire at just 250 feet,
In our fighting battle four we know we're hard to beat,
The leader is lost without a doubt,
And the number three has his INAS out,
But we're pressing on regardless
for the WingCo's AFC.

Also remember (Appolgies to 1(F) Sqn)
(to the Beatles tune of 'When we are 64')

Today we saw them high in the sky,
Over Wainfleet range,
Rockets they were throwing high and wide,
Bombs were going way down the side
Nobody heeds them, nobody needs them
Poor old 54

Gunnery?
 

How about:

How do you do f*ckin' gunnery,
I wish I new.......etc

Ref the pit mis-ID I think we should ask a Goldstar guy for the story (the driver who was allegedly involved was KIA in GW1).

Another "words of one song to the tune of another" as Humphrey Littleton would say is Puff the Magic Dragon:

Puff the Canberra pilot
Wanted for to fly
He rolled off down the runway
And climbed into the sky
But just as he got airborne
He crashed back to the floor
He's just another victim
Of a Treble One F4.

Showing a bit of heritage there.

At the risk of telling boring warries perhaps we should start a "great/stupid things I have done/seen in a Phantom" line.

There was a story going around when I was doing the OCU at Coningsby about some daft USMC dare concerning writing your initials on the outside of your F4 windscreen at some stage between take-off and landing....

To do that would mean getting the a/c down below the canopy limiting speed (was it something like 90 kts?), unstrapping, opening the canopy, scribbling your initials, clsoing the canopy again and strapping back in before the a/c departed......

Anyone else hear that?

Ah yes. Forgotten about that one.

A line apparently sufficed drawn with a service issue chinagraph!

Don't forget to depressurize first, BEagle. I thought the canopy limit was 80kts but my F-4E manual says 'Canopy open, Ground Operation 60kts; Load Factor Not Applicable'!!! I don't have an RAF one. 60kts was, as you know, off the bottom of the clock by some 20kts! I'm sure some RAF types had emulated this feat in the early Coningsby days, presumably off a very low speed bunt. I don't think one needed to unstrap to do it, either, as I could certainly reach the front of the windshield .............. on the ground, of course.

I thinks the UK's finest exponent can now be found on a Virgin flight deck!

So did anyone here fly the (UK) F-4 solo? Didn't take the system that long to put the kybosh on that little spot of fun.

F4-Jag shoot down - more

Heard a GAF pilot in either and Alpha Jet or Fiat was lining up for a shot on another Jag when he saw the 'winder leave the F4.

He broke off saying "Ah, ze RAF are playing for real today best I go home."

Impinger, you are right when you say the F4 was bought as a fighter not a bomber. It was the reason why I didn\'t finish the OCU. I couldn\'t hack 90s.

B*tard Bill (I quite liked him actually) and Super Nav were on the OCU at the time. The CGI was the infamous, and Bryant.

The OCU was aiming balls out at AD aircrew in contrast to the bombers down at Honnington. That I could have had two tours mud moving didn\'t count for !!!!.

I was visiting SHAPE before Christmas, the Scottish Group Captain was there getting his Christmas duty free (NEVER, what in an RAF Staff car)?

Anyway, we were taken hostage by a mad lothario with a gun. Quite exciting. Anyway we persuaded the Belgique police to detain us in the bar in case they needed to take a statement. Hours later, !!!! faced, we staggered next door to the motel. The Bwords\'s ADC was as !!!!-faced as the rest of us and missed her bosses start time the next morning. He gave her a right bollocks but we eventually managed to get word to him what a star she had been.

Services to Stella Artois and all that.

I think it was Jim McRoberts, and apologeies for adding a Canberry staory to this thread BUT . . .during confrontation in Malaysia, in a PR Canberra, they were tasked to do a low level run across an Indonesian airfield. The airfield was disused - oh yeah, why were they doing a recce - and there was no threat.

It was also at max range. The plan, a hi-lo-hi with about 20 miles low level and a climb as soon as they got the pics.

450k, 50 miles later, he was still calling Climb you bastard, climb.

Pressing on regardless for the Wingco's AFC
 

Seeing mention of the old song took me back a bit to just the sort of event that inspired it.
In the early 70's, life on 6Sqn was fairly idyllic. Based at Coningsby, flying about 30hrs month of DFGA on the F4M, it was a grown up Hunter squadron in atmosphere. Go in about 8'ish; check the UK Wx and then launch off somewhere suitable for low level simulated strikes. (Formal Met Brief was only attended by people who weren't flying.) Loads of great detachments. Apart from the two obligatory one month dets at Deci, there were many European visits and occasional weekend a/c to Bruggen. On top of this were the six week visits to Singapore and on one occasion on to Hong Kong. This involved most of the UK tanker force to get 6 a/c out there. (On the OCU course, I recall Mike Flynn's AAR briefing "It's like taking a running f*ck at a rolling doughnut....") Life was one long party.

We thought it was too good to last and indeed, that proved to be the case. The Magic Flying Circus was about to come to town.

The Wheels determined that by employing the Lepus flare, we would be able to carry out self-illuminated sea and ground attack. Joy was unconfined in the ranks.

Initial work-up was on illuminated ranges such as Theddlethorpe and Wainfleet and led in the initial instance to such exchanges as: Pilot "What's our dive angle now?" in a high pitched voice, followed by, Nav "We haven't got any dive angle".

As may be imagined, adrenaline flow was in inverse proportion to beer flow on a summer night. The only upside was the late start the next day.

Weapons employed were 20' freefall, 15' retard, and Sneb. All of this from an academic pattern.

Subsequent self-illuminated was practiced on Jurby, Salisbury Plain and Otterburn, eventually leading up to groups of 5 a/c. These comprised a leader with 3 flares on each inboard pylon, No 2 with 3 flares left side and Sneb on the right with bombs on the centre. The remaining 3 a/c had weapons on all three pylons. Outer pylons had SF tanks. Route was flown at 420kts 500' agl using radar prediction maps and worked OK if the height keeping was reasonably accurate.

The game was to make a 4G pull at a predetermined radar range from the target, releasing flares at 30, 35 and 40 degrees pitch angle. Immediate overbank and pull to kill the climb, reverse the turn, identify the target, reselect switches for weapon selected to drop, and dive on in. Thrilling stuff on a poor vis night with frequent ghosted flares in the orange goldfish bowl. Aircraft were in 2 mile radar trail and recovered in sequence onto an agreed heading and repeated the procedure until the flares were expended. Well, theoretically anyway. Trying to get the 5 a/c back into the correct sequence was a real challenge since the dive headings had probably been far from that briefed.

The really worrying thing that added to the excitement, was the increasingly common event of total attitude instrument failure in the F4M. The a/c theoretically had 3 independent systems, Inertial, AJB7 and MD1. On no occasion that I'm aware of, were the faults replicated on engineering investigation.

Anyway, during a 2 week det in the Ionian Sea attacking NATO boats, a further, and fatal incident occurred at Bruggen on GCA at night in cloud. The pilot was pulling back harder and harder to maintain wings level whilst in reality the a/c was banking. Pedal shaker, loss of control.......The pilot's canopy killed the Nav during the ejection sequence.

Pilots Union pressure got us off any more night attacks whilst investigation took place. Four nights of revelry in Naples ensued.

The night GA continued. The Squadron was assigned to Allied Command Europe as a specialist squadron. The boss got an MBE not an AFC and I went to the Navy.

Anyhow, that's how I remember it.

As you say, blaireau, life was just a long party. Remember the night in Limassol at the Romantic Bar when we dined out half the squadron who were leaving mid-detachment to form the first Germany sqns? As I recall it there was an ADEX at dawn the next day and by the time we got back to Akronelli it was far to late to go to bed so we just changed and briefed - our leader changed the callsign from "Red" to "Redeye", which was far more appropriate and we launched on time.

That was the occasion when one of our F4s attacked Gata radar head so low that the stn cdr who was on the roof with our sqn cdr turned to our boss and asked who was flying the now departing aircraft. "Aircraft" said the boss, "what aircraft?". Good man H-Smith.

Ah yes Soddim. The Cyprus detachment. Do you recall the scandal of the "crap in the hat"?
Check yr PMs

I certainly do - but if I remember correctly, that particular AEO got no more or less than he deserved! Checking PMs forthwith.

Anybody got the definitive story on the incident when the Leu F4 clipped the Cranberry?

No-one's answering FJJP's question, so instead does anyone want to admit being in the F4 that appeared on my Cranberry's wingtip in Benbecula Range 30 sec from launching a Rapier!!??

Perhaps not...

Keithl,
Who was doing what with a Rapier?!

FJJP - F*cked up night PROFIT. Pure and simple.

Checking the elstrobes might have helped......allegedly!

Exmil Benpeculiar were about to launch a Rapier at me. Well, more properly at the Rushton target a mile or so behind me.
Imagine my surprise when a grey, AD F4 (Leuchars, I guess) pulled up from below on to my right wing.

We made some phone calls afterwards and got the impression it was somebody senior (would be, wouldn't it), but never reaaly chased it. Better things to do...

Perhaps it was the Scottish Group Captain? No, silly me, he didn't actually used to fly, did he!

And if he did he never made a successful intercept - even against the wrong target.

Must've been Supernav in the back, then :p

Chris Kebab
Can I have another chop instead of the liver? !!!
Managed to get an unintentional 25 mins solo when my nav left & decided he would prefer tea & stickies with ein Fraulein in Area 2 a while ago. Bit noisy though a Cabrio Toomb!!
AAAAh those were the days
:-)

Some from the archives
Visiting Alice
http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/.../F4Measles.jpg
The Road to Stanley, allegedly

http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/.../F4Stanley.jpg

Wish they all could be Caledonian!!
http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/...Caledonean.jpg

LFA2 The Peheim Mast "Rotate Go"

http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/...G/F4Area_2.jpg

'greek god' ????? - you have changed!

Someone was asking about songs - here\'s (a bit more) of a cleaner one, plenty more in a song book I have kept but not very clean, pc, or printable


ROLLING DOWN THE RUNWAY

ROLLING DOWN THE RUNWAY, THROTTLES OPEN WIDE
SEE THE MIGHTY PHANTOM SWAY FROM SIDE TO SIDE
AIR-BORNE AGAIN WITHOUT A BLIP
IT\'S JUST ONE MORE ABORTED TRIP
BUT WE\'RE PRESSING ON REGARDLESS
FOR THE WING COMMANDERS AFC

WENT TO EARLY BRIEFING, CLIMBED INTO THE KITE
OPENED UP THE THROTTLES AND ROARED INTO THE NIGHT
LEAVING THE FLAREPATH FAR BEHIND
IT\'S DARK OUTSIDE BUT WE DON\'T MIND
COS WE\'RE PRESSING ON REGARDLESS
FOR THE WING COMMANDERS AFC (AND BAR)

NOW THE WAR IS OVER WE\'VE REACHED THE PROMISED LAND
THE WING COMMANDER GREETS US AND SHAKES US BY THE HAND
"WELL DONE CHAPS I THANK YOU MEN - (Whilst holding nose)
I\'VE JUST RECEIVED BY B.E.M."
BUT WE\'RE PRESSING ON REGARDLESS
FOR THE WING COMMANDERS AFC

(ADDITIONAL VERSES)
ROLLING DOWN THE RUNWAY THROTTLES OPEN WIDE
SEE THE MIGHTY JAGUAR SWAY FROM SIDE TO SIDE
AIRBORNE AGAIN BUT ONLY JUST
IT\'S NOT MUCH FUN WITH F*** ALL THRUST
BUT THEY\'RE PRESSING ON REGARDLESS
FOR THE WING COMMANDERS AFC (AND BAR)

ROLLING DOWN THE RUNWAY THROTTLE OPEN WIDE
SEE THE MIGHTY FALCON SWAY FROM SIDE TO SIDE
AIRBORNE AGAIN WITH JUST 9 G
I WISH I HAD A NAV WITH ME
BUT I\'M PRESSING ON REGARDLESS
FOR THE WING COMMANDERS AFC



WHEN YOU\'RE A PILOT (When I\'m 64)

WHEN YOU\'RE A PILOT ON TREBLE ONE
YOU\'RE ON QRA
DUMPING ALL YOUR MISSILES IN THE FORTH OF TAY
YOU DON\'T NEED THEM
THROW THEM AWAY
YOU SIT ON YOUR BAR STOOL
DRINKING YOUR MILK
WE THINK YOU\'RE A BUNCH OF BUMS
NOBODY NEEDS YOU NOBODY HEEDS YOU
**** OFF TREBLE ONE, **** OFF TREBLE ONE

WHEN YOU\'RE A PILOT ON TREBLE ONE
YOU ARE ON DISPLAY
FLYING YOUR FORMATION IN ST ANDREWS CROSS
WHO AUTHORISED THIS
BEST ASK THE BOSS
MAKING A TURN NUMBER 2 MAKES A TWITCH
THEN YOUR WING TIPS GONE
THERE\'S A BIG LOAD OF SPRAY
AND YOU END IN THE BAY
SO **** OFF TREBLE ONE, **** OFF TREBLE ONE

WHEN YOU\'RE A PILOT ON 74
YOU FLY IN STAIGHT LINES
DRESSING UP IN ALL YOUR FANCY YANKEE KIT
WE DON\'T NEED YOU ,
YOU GIVE US THE !!!!!S
YOU SIT ON YOUR BAR STOOL
DRINKING YOUR MILK
THEN FALL ON THE FLOOR
NOBODY NEEDS YOU, NOBODY HEEDS YOU
**** OFF 74, **** OFF 74

(31 Sqn verse omitted):mad:

Prof A

Keithl - been away for few days; thanks for the answer. Could have been the aforementioned senior officer if '88-'90; sounds like the sort of thing that might have happened with him (I can speak from experience).

Greek God - your nav's surname didn't begin with Y did it? Close encounter with a Cranberry? More solo time than Valley F4 - Lungs completed successful test of furniture. If in doubt, vote with your hands! Nice piccies; I have seen similar (but much better) from Saunders Island - something to do with a hot running engine and copper on the leading blades.:}

...I well remember the wind-up on BFBS leading up to the 'MPA Open Day' in 1988 when the announcer said that not only were the Reds going to attend, but the BBMF were booked too!....
....The B*nnies/Nota's/Stilla's/Andy's must've loved that one!!:O

Hello Greek God
 

Greek God-long time no hear!.......how is it??
Spon;)

Thanks Greek God - just what I was looking for!

Now, does anyone else have any other pics taken at Alice or elsewhere (Byron, Kent, Pax Port Howard, etc)?

Spon is that really you?

RHINO

Naaaaaargh!