The following link is a must read for any Phantom Phan. It is long but full of valuable information. It also takes a long time to load if you are using dial up service.
http://kalaniosullivan.com/KunsanAB/OtherUnits/HowitwasbF4.html
pretty exhaustive i’d say!!! i’ll have to go back when i have more time to read. thanks for the link. later.
Great link,but as you say, long. Thanks for posting.
Regards, Rick
Great link Berny, I love it. I am definately a Phantom Phanatic.
Darwin [alien]
Thanks Berny, it’s great and I bookmarked it immediately. But they got the songs in the wrong decades. The Fleetwoods’ classic “Mr. Blue” in the '70s? I’m getting up there, but I wasn’t even born when that song came out (it was my selection, though, on the Phantom site soundtrack). What, this isn’t the music trivia Forum? Jeez, sorry guys…
Oh, wait, I know what I was going to say: I saw in it a fact that reminded me of how we pick up received information in this hobby, and how it becomes gospel. I don’t know how many times I read how the Hasegawa 1/48 F-4C/D kit needed to have the bulges trimmed from the wings to make a proper F-4C because the Navy B version was the one with the fat tires. Well, I passed that information on I don’t know how many times (I’m pretty sure I originally learned it in an very long-ago FSM review of the kit), and did until a few months ago. I think it was you, Berny, who let those ignorant sods among us (I’m raising my hand, Berny), who had propogated that bit of misinformation, know it was the correct information.
I don’t know how many of those kits I built wasting how much time grinding, sanding, smoothing that enormous bulge off each wing. And how many people I led astray to do the same thing… Not that the earth is tilting on its axis because of two plastic bulges missing, but it would have been nice to have learned earlier. At least I know to shave the extra little “goatee” off the Rhino horn under the radome to change a D model to a C, as molded on the Hasegawa kit.
For those who don’t have an intimate relationship with the Phantom, and have no way to count the internal fuel tanks, like me and most people, that tiny antenna is the only way to tell one Phantom subtype from the other, unless it is a “hornless” D model, as mentioned earlier. And try to tell someone who started modeling after the Phantom went out of the US inventory the differences between early, late and middle E models, starting with the gun muzzle and working back…arggghhh, it could make a person crazy.
TOM
Well Tom, when you have worked on the Phantom, as long as I did, you can tell a C from a D without looking at the radome. There are several differences that wasn’t even memtioned in that link. And the E model, from gun muzzle, strip lights, wings, tail section, back bone and landing gear wheels. I have seen a lot of changes in the old gal. And, I can still remember them all.
Great site Berny cheers for sharing