VX-4 phantom loads

Ed Rasimus wrote:

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 06:41:38 GMT, Guy Alcala
wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 02:32:12 GMT, Guy Alcala
wrote:

snip

I just looked at my form 5 and found that I flew 498 one time in my
year at Korat--what are the odds of that, not hitting a tail number in
9 months of single-squadron operation?

How early on did you fly it? Perhaps it was shot down or severely damaged before you could fly
it again?

I flew it in November of '72. That means it survived through
Linebacker and it wasn't lost during Linebacker II either.

Luck of the draw then, I guess.

snip

We all get taller, smarter, braver and better looking as the years
pass. I'm just a bit skeptical of the M1.6 estimate. Starting with
three tanks and wall-to-wall missiles from 420 KIAS in the escort role
and then being able to configure to clean, accelerate and hit that
kind so speed at the typical altitude would be very unlikely.

To get
M1.6 with the missiles, the pods and the altitude under FL 400 just
doesn't seem within the realm of capability of the airplane.

You may be right. Coe says they were cruising at 450 knots @ 20kft with the strike flight at
350-400, and the escorts were weaving to stay with the strike. If those speeds are KIAS or
KCAS, the escorts would be cruising at something upwards of .9. Those speeds seem kind of low
to me to be TAS for F-4s, even fully loaded.

They would be indicated, not true. Typically at that point in a
mission the bomb droppers would be trying to maintain 480 ground speed
which translates to 8 miles/minute.

In that case, 350-400 KIAS for the strikers would be about right. At 20 kft ISA 350 KCAS works out
to 480 kt., or 465 kt. after taking compressibility error into account. Given the typical hotter
than ISA conditions, 350KCAS (which I think is what the ASI actually gave you in the F-4) @ 20kft.
would be right around 480 kt.

That would be tempered by
time-to-go to TOT and distance read out on the INS. The escorts would
be trying to keep 420 indicated which was an approximation of corner
velocity.

Wouldn't they want some extra E over corner, because they'd be bound to **** it off quickly with any
hard maneuvering?

Anyway, after one of the strikers called MiGs and broke, he says he jettisoned his tanks and
went burner, while beginning a descending turn. He says he made about two turns, ending up at
about 15kft with the strike flight out in front of him (they'd been turning too), when he saw a
pair of 21s out in front and above at about 20kft. He'd loosened up the turns as no Migs had
appeared immediately, so would have gained considerable speed, although perhaps not to1.6, which
does seem a bit fast for 15kft. What do you think -- could he have gotten that fast relatively
clean, in a diving, non-windup turn? I don't have a -1-1 for the F-4, so can't do a ballpark
estimate of the accel.

No way to get to that speed at that altitude. I'd readily accept 1.2M,
but can't imagine getting to 1.6 and would really find it tactically a
mistake to get going that fast even if you could.

Okay, although since he was rear aspect on the MiGs who seem to have been doing their usual
supersonic (or at least, high transonic) missile pass and blow through, being well above transonic
would seem to be necessary if he was going to catch them. It would certainly give his AIM-7 a better
chance of overhauling them. Do you ever see him at Rats reunions? If so, maybe you could ask him
about it.

Well, as much as I respect the considerable research that Jenkins did
on the F-105, as we've often discussed, the use of pods by Iron Hand
flights was much more the exception than the rule.

Use of, yes, but mandated carriage of, no. 7th AF required pod carriage by all a/c going into
NVN, even the Weasels, despite their protests that this limited them to a single Shrike and they
were rarely turned on in any case, as the jammers interfered with reception by the Weasel gear.
I've got shots of 105Fs carrying single ALQ-101s in '68 or so. The dual Shrike launcher also
seems to have been developed in response to this silly mandate, but the pilots disliked the
vibration and drag.

The order for Weasels to carry a pod led to the requirement for an internal jammer for the 105F
to recover a weapon station, which became the ALQ-105 scab mount on the 105G, essentially an
ALQ-101 split in half lengthwise. They still rarely turned it on, but could once again carry
Shrikes on both O/Bs.

Well, we had been talking about the F-4E portion of the Hunter/Killer
team and the carriage of dual pods. My original point was that some
equipment like ECM pods and AIM-7s were standard throughout the
squadron and not adjusted for the particular role of a tail number on
a particularl day--hence, H/Ks carried a pod even if we weren't going
to use it.

No argument there. I still don't know how I easily managed to find shots of two different 34th TFS
a/c (as well as one from the 421st) carrying two pods in that era, if it was as unusual as you state.
Just one more minor mystery that's unlikely to be solved.

I pointed out the minor error in Jenkin's quote that you offered
regarding emphasis on a pod for Iron Hand applications.

snip

I think we're talking past each other here. My point was that the higher commanders/people who wrote
the requirement for the ALQ-101 very likely* did so for exactly the reasons Jenkins claimed, i.e. to
provide better protection for a/c that weren't able to benefit from mutual jamming. Subsequent
priority deployment of the ALQ-101 to those a/c tasked with such detached missions, i.e. Iron
Hand/MiGCAP/Recon, indicates that Jenkins' comments about the perceived need for the development of
the 101, _regardless of whether it was actually turned on by the crews_, is correct.

*I say "very likely" because I don't have Jenkins here, and don't know what his sources were for this
statement, if he gave them.

Offhand, I don't recall seeing photos of a/c other than F-105WW or MiGCAPs carrying ALQ-101s from
1968-1973, although it may have happened. But even if there are some shots of same, the vast
majority of photos I have of strikers/chaffers/escorts during LB I/II show them carrying pure noise
jamming pods, and not ALQ-101s. I don't think I have a single photo of a 388th F-4E carrying an
ALQ-101 during the bombing halt and LB periods. I know that the 388th had them when they were still
equipped with Thuds, because there's a photo in Larry Davis' "Wild Weasel", taken at Korat, of a
whole rack of ALQ-101s waiting to be loaded on a/c, with Thud tails visible above the revetments in
the background. Presumably there were only limited numbers of -101s available in the theater, so if
those pods weren't at the 388th in 1972 they must have been somewhere else. From photo evidence it
appears that "somewhere else" was the 432nd at Udorn, the unit tasked with MiGCAP and Recon over the
north, which is right in line with the intended deployment of the -101 described by Jenkins (the
F-105Gs had their own " -101s" by this time, the ALQ-105).

Along that line, I could only find a single shot of a 67th TFS F-4CWW carrying a pod, and it's an
-87. The sample size is way too small to reach any definite conclusions, but I'd guess that there
may not have been enough 101s to go around. The 67th was apparently tasked to do a lot of pre-emptive
Shrike firings, which would have kept them out of the worst threats. Alternatively, Davis has
illustrations showing them carrying ALQ-119s, which may have been just entering service at the time.
The F-4Cs at Spangdahlem carried -119s a few years later, but I don't know when they became
available.

Guy