Hooks (Was Operation Cyanide and the USS Liberty )

Peter Stickney wrote:

Not unless the Navy stared flying F-4Es. (The gun-nosed model) That's
the only kind the Israelis have had. I think they did get some USAFE
F-4E's though.

I dunno if they got some from the USN - but they got a
bunch of our old F-4Es in 1973. We must have passed at
least three squadrons of them through MacDill that year.
They came to us from an IRAN facility, where they had
been freshly-painted in desert camo - and we got the
additional duty of full (avionics) systems checks on every
one of them before the trip across the Atlantic.
Lots of broke WCS radars there... on top of the approx.
120 F-4Es (in four squadrons) of our own Wing.

BTW - this was accomplished (for the WCS toads) with an
80% manning level; we had about 90 3-levels, straight
from tech school - and 8 NCOs, E-4 or higher, to cover
150 F-4s at any given time, a shop with three mockups,
and three radar calibration docks. (Whew!) We had
19-year-old two-stripers on "Red X" orders, and as shift
supervisors.

It was quite a "rite of passage" for many!

running