“It grows on you. It smells like an airplane, it makes a lot of noise, vibrates, goes fast, it’s real loud. You put it on like a glove. I’ll never forget the airplane and it will always have a soft spot in my heart,” CDR John Patton, former F-4 Phantom with VF-161
The historic video in this post, which was shot on March 25, 1986, onboard USS Midway (CV 41), depicts a significant moment in the history of naval aviation: the final F-4 Phantom fighter to be launched from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier was thrown across the “Big 41” on that day.
At 9:12 a.m., the Phantom 210 of Fighter Squadron 151 was flown off the deck of the carrier by Lt. Alan Colegrove, the pilot, and Lt. Greg Blankenship, the RIO, bringing an end to a period that lasted more than three decades. Midway was conducting flight operations in the East China Sea, some 100 miles south of the Republic of Korea when the historic fly-off took place.
The last Phantoms in the regular Navy’s inventory, the F-4Ss of VF-151 and VF-161, served on 13 active aircraft carriers. Following upgrades made to the ship during its 1987 yard period, Carrier Air Wing 5 was set to receive the F/A-18 Hornet, the most modern and sophisticated aircraft in the Navy at the time. In the article End of an Era, written by JO2 Ron Vanasdlen and published in the April 1986 issue of All Hands, Midway’s commanding officer, Capt. Riley D. Mixson, said, “With this fly-off, we have witnessed the end of an era, that of an aged but still most effective fighting machine, the F-4S Phantom.
The Phantom had been the tried and true airplane for Navy aviators for almost 30 years.
The U.S. Navy Blue Angels and U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration teams flew the F-4 for the first time at the same time.
“The capabilities of that jet have paid off in many ways for the Navy, and I do hate to see it go,” Beard said.
CDR VF-161’s CO at the time, John Patton, is a former Blue Angel and has 16 years of experience flying F-4s. He has flown the Phantom for more than 3,200 hours. There simply couldn’t be a finer airplane, in his opinion.
“The F-4 has been a strike fighter since 1961 when it became operational. We carried all the ordnance everybody else had, plus we did the fighter missions.”
The squadrons have a remarkable past with the jet. The final ace squadron of the Vietnam War was VF-151. The squadron took down the final MiG in that conflict while flying off the Midway in F-4Js.
In order to fly back to the US, the aircraft left VF-151 and VF-161.
A few of the aircraft were sent to the desert for preservation, two were designated for the VX-4 PMS at Pt. Mugu, California, a number were sent directly to the Marine Corps, and a few more were sent to NAS North Island for some minor repairs and refitting before being sent to the USMC. The planes were still in use by the Marines into the 1990s.
CDR Bud “Thunder” Taylor, then VF-151’s CO, has 4579 flying hours, with 1,450 hours in the F-4. He described piloting the F-4. “It grows on you. It smells like an airplane, it makes a lot of noise, vibrates, goes fast, it’s really loud. You put it on like a glove. I’ll never forget the airplane, and it will always have a soft spot in my heart.”
It’s not hard to see why Taylor likes the jet. The veteran pilot of the Vietnam War completed 150 missions in the Phantom and was happy with its dual engines, two seats, speed, survivability of the jet, and the typical comfortable feeling of a jet doing its job.
“Still, I would not hesitate to take the F-4 into war tomorrow,” he concluded.
Photo by U.S. Navy