Consistent CAP over a fleet from a land base

Ed Rasimus wrote:
"KDR" wrote:
In case of defensive missions, what was the Torrejon F-4C's 'typical'
mission radius? Did it normally involve air-to-air refueling?

During the late '70s while I was there, Spain was not yet a member of
NATO. (I participated in the integration and early work up exercises a
few years later when I was at USAFE Hq and Spain came aboard.)

There were no active missions from home base. We were always deployed
down the Med at forward operating locations in Italy and Turkey. We
trained for nuke strike, ground attack, air defense and
deployment--basically those were the days of fully qualified in
anything the aircraft was capable of doing.

When we exercised with Spanish air defense forces, which is apparently
the closest mission to respond to your question, we would configure
with three tanks, AIM-9s and AIM-7E. In that configuration on CAP, we
could maintain station for slightly over two hours. If you translate
that into distance, you could get one hour out at approx 500 kts
ground speed, ten minutes of engagement time at altitude and one hour
back: that defines a 500 nautical mile combat radius. That could be
increased if you jettisoned tanks as they went dry to reduce drag.

We were collocated in those days with the 98th Strat Wing, so we had
tankers available at all times if the mission would require.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com

An ex-ROKAF pilot who flew F-4D says 500NM is too far even with three
tanks. He commented the 10-minute engagement should be done only using
mil power to get back to base. Was there any massive difference in
endurance between C and D models?