SPEEDREADS
SPLASH ’N GO
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NOTES FROM TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
FINAL FAREWELL TO THE F-4 PHANTOM The F-4 established 16 speed, altitude and time-to-climb records. In 1959, its prototype set the world altitude record at 98,556 feet (30,000 meters). In 1961, an F-4 set the world speed record at 1,604 mph (2581 kph) on a 15-mile circuit. By the end of production in 1985, McDonnell-Douglas had built 5,068 Phantom IIs, and Mitsubishi, in Japan, had built 127.
The F-4 Phantom of Lt. Col. Ronald “Elvis” King will be making its final public flight as part of the flyover before the AAA Texas 500.
Fans attending the AAA Texas 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday, Nov. 6, at Texas Motor Speedway will get the rare opportunity to witness the final public flight in the United States of one of the most revered military aircraft during the pre-race flyover. A pair of McDonnell Douglas QF-4 Phantom II fighter jets, retired by the United States Air Force in 1997, will conduct the flyover in the aircraft’s final public appearance before officially retiring from flying on Dec. 21 and eventually destroyed as aerial military target drones. Lieutenant Colonel Ronald “Elvis” King, commander of the 82nd Aerial Target Squadron, Detachment 1 who in 2015 became the
last pilot in the Air Force to ever learn to fly the QF-4, will lead the flyover for the AAA Texas 500. It will be his third flyover at a NASCAR event, including his second at Texas Motor Speedway. He will be joined in the other QF-4 Phantom by James Harkins, a civilian pilot in the same squadron who actually taught King to fly the QF-4. The McDonnell two-place, twinjet, all-weather F-4 Phantom II, with top speeds more than twice that of sound, was one of the most versatile fighters ever built. It served in the first line of more Western air forces than any other jet. Just 31 months after its first flight, the F-4 was the U.S. Navy’s fastest, highest-flying and longest-range fighter. It first flew May 27, 1958, and entered service in 1961.
F-4s saw combat in both the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm and served with the air forces of 11 countries in addition to the United States. Both U.S. military flight demonstration teams, the Navy Blue Angels and the Air Force Thunderbirds, flew the Phantom II from 1969 to 1973. The 5,000th Phantom was delivered on May 24, 1978, in ceremonies that also marked the 20th anniversary of the fighter’s first flight, and McDonnell Douglas delivered the last St. Louis–built Phantom II in October 1979. By 1998, approximately 800 were still in service around the world. In 2014, modified Phantoms designated QF-4 were being used as remotely controlled aerial targets over the Gulf of Mexico to test pilots, aircraft such as drones and weapons at Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City, Fla. In September 2014, the first unmanned QF16 Viper was successfully tested there as a proposed replacement for the aging QF-4s.
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