The USAF variants of the Phantom during Vietnam start with the F-4C and later the F-4D.  I spent 3 hours on the phone with Brig Gen Robin Olds in 1988.  My new bride and I were living in Montgomery, Alabama while I was going to Squadron Officers School.  We had to do a paper and brief on some person who made an impact on warfighting or warfare.  My classmates picked people like Sun Tzu, Clausewitz or some other “dead guy”.  I wanted to do some one I could still talk to.  I actually found Robin Olds phone number in the Maxwell AFB library!  He lived in Steamboat Springs Colorado until he died last year.  I cannot tell you in words what it was like to talk to General Olds.  I learned more in a 3 hour phone call than I have in any classroom on war fighting principles, leadership in combat and knowing thyself and thy enemy.

My reason for calling him was to have him tell me about Operation Bolo and the Thai Nguyen Steel Mill raid… Plymouth Flight.  The Osprey book covers his MiG kill on Bolo and the Jim Laurier paintings portray exactly what General Olds told me his airplane looked like on that particular day.  He carried ALQ-71 pod, AIM-9B Sidewinders and AIM-7 Sparrows.  Plymouth Flight trip to Thai Nguyen was different.  He went all the way to the Steel Mills in 900 foot ceilings and rain using clock to map to ground navigation.  He said they were a ¼ mile off course when they got to the valley the steel mill was in.  We still get lost with GPS!  He carried 6 Mk-82 500 pound Snake-Eye bombs on the inboard pylons.  I asked him about that… why Snakes.  His answer told me a lot about his leadership.  Remember the 900 foot ceilings I mentioned?  Yea, raining like crazy!  He did not want his maintenance folks out in the pouring rain to change the bomb loads so they went with the Snakes.  You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want. 

You have seen F-4s with the bomb racks and AIM-9 missile rails in thousands of pictures.  Robin Olds and his Maintenance Officer are credited with originating the modification.  He mentioned he went round and round with his Maintenance Officer about fabricating AIM-9 missile rails for the inboard pylons.  They would go on all kinds of bombing missions without AIM-9s and he wanted to get Sidewinders on the jets.  He had them put on all of the jets.  Now most of you who have been in the military know there is a laborious process you must go through to get modifications to jets.  He did a field mod so they could self-escort on these bombing missions.  General Olds got all kinds of static for doing this in the field but they became standard.  He also mentioned to me they spent a lot of time talking with the Navy to figure out better ways to fight the good fight over North Vietnam.  Those rails became standard on F-4s and are carried even to this day.

For an F-4C kit weapons load, we would want to see AIM-9 rails and triple ejector rack or TERs on the inboard pylons.  Remember, in the early years of USAF F-4s, they used the straight edged Navy inboard wing pylons.  You would need to have both the Navy and later USAF pylons in the kit to be accurate.  The centerline station would have an external tank or a multiple ejector rack or MER.  Robin Olds 8th Tac Fighter Wing Wolfpack carried a lot of Mk-117 750 pound or Mk-82 500 pound bombs.  This would be a typical load for the early F-4Cs in Vietnam.  The ALQ-71 electronic countermeasure pod would also be a standard pod on the F-4C. But General Olds told me the only pylon they could carry it on was the left outboard wing pylon.  It was the only one wired to do so.  This changed over the course of the air war.

I would leave the option for the modeler to put the IR sensor under the nose of the F-4C or leave it off.  Some had it and some did not.  General Olds told me his 8th Tac Fighter Wing had jets with and without the IR sensor under the nose.  The F-4D was an entirely different matter.

The F-4D had the famous “double hump’ IR sensor under the nose.  The towel rack on the spine for the LORAN navigation system would also have to be included in the kit.  Not all jets had the LORAN anatenna and there are several books which giv eth etail numbers with this modification.  Osprey’s book goes into detail about some of the avionics variations (COMBAT TREE comes to mind) and weapons loads for Linebacker F-4Ds. 
There is one weapon I wish we could get in a kit.  The Vietnam Phantoms and Thunderchiefs carried the SUU-30B cluster bomb cans which you cannot get in any kit.  My good friend Jim Rotramel sent me his incredible detailed drawings of the SUU-30 cans.  These were used on Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) Hunter-Killer missions, Triple A suppression missions, road reconnaissance missions… you get the picture.  The SUU-30B can I am talking about is NOT the same one in the Hasegawa weapons kits… these have big round noses with FMU fuse nipples and flat butts.  F-4s, F-105s, F-111s, and A-7Ds all carried this SUU-30B canister.  Hopefully we can get these in the Eduard F-4C/D kit.  I can get Mk-82s, AIM-9s, GBU-10s and a host of other weapons from the Hasegawa weapons kits.  I cannot get Vietnam era SUU-30B canisters and most jets were carrying them.  Go to http://www.vectorsite.net/twbomb_02.html to see a good picture of the SUU-30B cans.

One of the missions my good friend Bob Houghton who flew with Robin Olds told me about was the “Night Owl” missions.  Now imagine this picture; you have no LANTIRN pods, no night vision goggles, no Chem Lights to use in the cockpit and no way to “see” like we do now.  You are running around trying to find targets with the standard issue Mk-1 eyeball as some guy above you puking out high intensity flares.  The Night Owls carried the SUU-30B cans, Mk-82s, and ALQ-71/ALQ-101 ECM pods.  These ECM pods could be carried in the forward Sparrow missile wells or the inboard wing pylons.  Believe it or not, the history Channel’s Dogfight series shows fairly accurate loads for the time period so take a close look at the Phantom groomed for MIGCAP missions.  The Jim Laurier paintings in the Osprey book on MiG Kills in Vietnam shows these real well too.  Jim Rotramel has drawn these ECM pods in 1/32nd scale so I hope the Eduard USAF Vietnam F-4C/D kits have BOTH these ECm pods in the kit to make an accurate Phantom groomed for combat near Hanoi.  If you went inot the SAM rings, you had ECM pods.Even the Wild Weasel F-105F/Gs carried ALQ-71 or ALQ-101 pods for a while.

One mission the Linebacker F-4s performed was “Bridge Busting” with PAVE Knife laser designator pods, early GBU-10 2000 pound laser-guided bombs, ALQ-71 and ALQ-101 ECM pods in the forward Sparrow wells.  These were stationed in what was called an asymmetric load… GBU-10 on left outboard, PAVE Knife on left inboard (the only station you could carry it on), ALQ-71 in left Sparrow well, ALQ-101 in right Sparrow missile well, centerline 600 gallon fuel tank, AIM-7Es in both rear Sparrow missile wells, GBU-10 on right inboard pylon, and an external tank on the right outboard.  This looks great on a model.  MIGCAP weapons loads are cool but the bomber loads really look great!

I’m looking forward to seeing these F-4 kits from Eduard.  Their recent kits have been great and I’m sure they are going to make these the industry standard for all of us who like modern jets.  I hope they will take some of these suggestions to heart and include them in the kits for the USAF F-4C/D variant of the Phantom.

im a dot... Mark Hasara