Customer Reviews

F-4 Phantom (Modern combat aircraft)

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McDonnell Douglas Aircraft company certainly hit a home run with the Phantom II. It was big, powerful, fast and could carry 9 tons of bombs (a B-17 could carry 4). When this book was written, the F-15 (also by McDonnell Douglas now Boeing) was just coming into service. The F-4 began as a Navy fighter and was so good the USAF bought it. So did a lot of other countries. Over 5,100 were made - a very large number for a post WW2 western fighter.

Bill Gunston was a pilot in the RAF & written many books on aviation. I especially liked the intro here, where he cautioned other writers never to call something the "bestest" or "mostest" and the proceeds to just that about the Phantom. At the time, it was. One could argue the merits of more, smaller, cheaper MiG-21's, but no other plane of the time could do what the "Rhino" or "Flying Brick"

This book is dated, not really good for modelers, although there are a few color photos and 2 small pages of color line drawings. The chapter describing how world records are achieved is interesting, let's just say conditions are optimized for the pilot and bird. It's a good, quick read. I also found it interesting that they were talking about RPV's back in the 1970's as well as GPS.

I see it is listed at some very reasonable prices for used copies, which would suffice for most. Not a must have, but good nonetheless.