May 092010
 

Used to be a popular gimmick for aircraft manufacturers to stage photos of their combat aircraft with all the weapons they could carry. I don’t see that too much anymore… possibly because there jsut aren’t all that many new combat aircraft being produced (especially comapred to the 50’s and 60’s, when a major new aircraft could be expected to come along once a year or faster).

f-4-load-1.jpg

yf4h-1load.jpg

 Posted by at 8:41 am

  18 Responses to “F-4 Phantom II weapons loads”

  1. Seeing images like this makes me want to see them used. Maybe the PR folks now feel the same way, and want to protect us from our drive to use tools?

    I love these pictures. Also love the ones of the X-plane and all its support gear and personnel. It gives a clear idea of what’s possible and what’s available.

  2. The Russians still display the weapons near aircraft from time-to-time:
    http://www.ausairpower.net/Kh-29L+Kh-29T-1S.jpg
    Fujima model company used to make a 1/72 scale model Phantom II that had pretty much every weapon it could carry included, including some that were never deployed operationally on it, like Genie nuclear rockets.
    It would be interesting to know which country first came up with the idea of photographing their aircraft like this.

  3. 2 questions:

    what exactly is the CP-105 starter pod to do .. ? is that a APU / starter cart disgused as pod to lug around to airfields lacking infrastructre?

    and what is the difference between a BLU-1/B and a Mk116A2? both are 110 gallon napalm bombs and look exactly the same ot my untrained eye ..

  4. These are a few of my favourite things.

    As for the starter pod, this is the best I’ve got:

    http://books.google.ca/books?id=REBWAAAAMAAJ&q=rcpp-105&dq=rcpp-105&cd=5

    Jim

  5. > what is the difference between a BLU-1/B and a Mk116A2

    The M-116 was the predecessor to the BLU-1, but other than that I’ve got nothing.

  6. See also:

    http://a4skyhawk.org/5e/g154172/html/154172g.htm

    Presumably a small turbine engine to supply air, and possibly electricity? I wonder if it could be operated on the aircraft or not. I’ve never seen a pylon on anything plumbed for enough air or current to start an engine, so the external umbilical looks inevitable.

    Jim

  7. Such displays were also quite common in 80’s-90’s military illustrated guides.

  8. I can’t help but think that a similar picture with, say, the F-22, wouldn’t be quite as impressive looking. It seems like there are fewer different types of munitions and reduced quantities of those.

  9. > the F-22, wouldn’t be quite as impressive looking.

    Indeed, but the presumption would be that those fewer weapons would nevertheless still kick substnatially more ass than the earlier, larger warloads due to enhanced precision and (hopefully) reliability. Viet Nam era Sparrows were, IIRC, teh suck WRT reliability.

  10. Oh I agree completely. The Sparrow kill rate was 13% in 1972.

  11. Some of the Sparrows would never even ignite after release and just fall into the jungle.
    The big problem though was the combo of SARH and rules of engagement that required the pilot to optically identify his opponent as hostile before attacking him.
    Considering that the enemy aircraft was usually a MiG-17 or 21, both fairly small and very maneuverable aircraft, once they were close enough to recognize, it was pretty easy for them to maneuver enough so that the Phantom lost radar lock on them, and the Sparrow would stop homing on them.
    Sparrow would have been a lot more suitable for intercepting a Soviet bomber or cruise missile that was heading towards a carrier task force than being used in a dogfight, so the lack of success can’t be totally blamed on the missile, but rather not being used for the type of engagement it was designed for.
    It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if they had persevered with the original design concept for the missile where it was going to use fully-active radar homing rather than semi-active homing that relied on the launch aircraft illuminating the target with its radar. Launch range might have gone down significantly, but it would have worked a lot better in a Vietnam style dogfight.

  12. My fav! The Skyraider, you know, Sandy, COULD carry all that, and loiter on station for hours, putting fire and steel on the target at will. Phantom was nice, but 2 passes and it had to head back to the barn to reload.

    And I really love the A 10 in full on closeair support mode, another monster that can loiter for hours and lay the Finger of God anywhere you want. Booyaa.

  13. Pat? Remember Skybolt? The only thing it ever successfully did was prove the Law of Gravity was working up to spec. Or Copperhead? What a piece of crap that was, complete waste of resources and time, both of them.

  14. And I don’t see any Snake Eye. Hell, whats Nape without some Snake!?!?

  15. The Auxiliary Power Pod contained a turbine engine that provided electricity, refrigeration for the avionics and the crew’s pressure suits, and bleed air to start the J79 engines.

    Note that the top photo has been retouched to take out the original F-4 and the nuke.

  16. They got Skybolt to work as intended by the final test shot…it’s just they hadn’t figured out the political ramifications of the thing.
    Knowing that those B-52’s flying out at the edge of Soviet radar range could put a nuclear warhead into downtown Moscow in such a short time that there would be no way to organize a counterstrike before the government was vaporized was the perfect way to put the USSR on a hair trigger, expecting a nuclear surprise attack at any moment and figuring it might be best to do a surprise attack of their own first if anything even a little odd seemed to be going on that could lead to nuclear war.
    That wasn’t the way to reinforce the concept of MAD.
    Anyway it led to Britain getting Polaris as a replacement for it after Skybolt was canceled and France getting pissed about that and going its own way as far as a nuclear deterrent went.
    Copperhead’s big problem is that it requires the target to be illuminated by a laser to hit it. That means getting a illuminating laser close enough to the target to paint it, so that clouds can interfere with an airborne target designator laser, and fog, dust storms, or smokescreens with a ground-fired one.
    It still is a usable system, it just has its limitations, mostly due to needing appropriate weather conditions to work right.
    Copperhead did get used during Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Fuck-Up (or whatever they called that thing), fired from M-109 Paladin 155 mm self-propelled howitzers.

  17. With far better off the shelf, shoulder fired anti-armor systems widely available Copperhead was a boondoggle. Skybolt was before my time, only heard it second hand. Copperhead I got to watch fail, and fail repeatedly. As you say, it was secondary illum dependent. A good FO, with fair to middling gun crews, could kill armor with 155 HE rds, no illumination other than nightvision for darkness needed.

    Dependence on guided systems is dangerous, when all the technotoys crap out you got to do it the old fashioned way.

  18. Here’s an interesting article on the Russian equivalent of Copperhead, and a comparison of the two systems:
    http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Krasnopol:+a+laser-guided+projectile-a092457739

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