"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 18:08:02 -0400, "Bob Martin"
wrote:

Anyone have data on typical chaff/flare loads for F-4's, both in Vietnam
and
modern day? Thanks

No flares on F-4s in SEA. (Photo-flash carts on RF-4s only). No
self-protection chaff carts either. We carried cardboard boxes (about
the size of a box of Xmas tree tinsel) in the speedbrake wells. Open
the boards to deploy. Try not to use speed brakes earlier in the
mission. One time use.

Ed,
do you possibly know the reasons why no chaff/flare dispensers were mounted
on Phantoms at the time (and, AFAIK, for most of the 1970s)?

From the standpoint of our days this appears as a very strange measure to
me: given how many R-13 shots could have been averted over Vietnam alone....

BTW, from what I know a USAF Lt.Col. who was in the back-seat of the IIAF
RF-4E when this was intercepted by a Soviet AF MiG-21 deep inside the Soviet
airspace, in November 1973, used photo-flash cartriges to decoy four R-13s:
this was the reason the Soviet pilot had no other way out but to ram the
Phantom (one could find this story on the walls of quite a few former Soviet
AF bases in East Germany). The MiG-pilot was killed when his plane
disintegrated, while the Iranain pilot and the USAF WSO survived. Although
the engagement happened by the day, the crew of that RF-4E said the
cartriges were so powerful, they had a feeling somebody turned a second sun
right behind their backs each time one was deployed....

Tom Cooper
Co-Author:
Iran-Iraq War in the Air, 1980-1988:
http://www.acig.org/pg1/content.php
and,
Iranian F-4 Phantom II Units in Combat:
http://www.osprey-publishing.co.uk/t...hp/title=S6585