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McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, QuickTime movie, 590Kb, 320x240.
| | McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
F-4A Phantom II: By any criterion one of the five or six most important warplanes ever produced and the only Western warplane to be built in numbers exceeding 5,000 since World War II (1939-45), the Phantom II is still in comparatively widespread service during the mid-1990s but approaching obsolescence and scheduled for retirement by the beginning of the next century. The origins of the Phantom II can be traced back to June 1953, when the US Navy contracted for its next carrierborne fighter with Vought rather than McDonnell. The St Louis-based company was highly disappointed for it had supplied three previous generations of turbojet-powered fighters to the US Navy and put all its experience with these three types, together with the F-101 Voodoo for the US Air Force, into the preliminary design for the type intended as the US Navy's first supersonic fighter. Carrierborne fighters were the company's prime interest, so McDonnell started work on the concept for a still more advanced type and set about the difficult process of convincing the US Navy of the new concept's value as an all-weather fighter. | |  |
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