F-4 chaff/flare loads

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 10:23:25 GMT, "Tom Cooper" wrote:

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
.. .

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....

Tom Cooper

They weren't mounted because they didn't yet exist. The ALE-40 (the
blister dispenser bolted on the side of the wing pylons) came into
production around '73 or '74 after the air war was over. As I
mentioned, the operational E-models got them, but they never got
retrofitted to the C's that were still active. (I don't know about the
D's.)

What's an R-13? Do you mean SA-7 or Atoll?

SA-7 was pretty much a "no threat" for fast movers in SEA. Atoll was a
player, but if you knew the guy was back there, you maneuvered to
defeat. If you didn't know he was there, flares wouldn't have been
much good. A lot of the MiG successes were unseen blow throughs where
flares wouldn't have been employed.