3 Air Forces Still Flying The F-4 Phantom More Than 60 Years Later

The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II first flew on May 27, 1958, entered service on December 30, 1960, and stayed in production until 1981, by which point 5,195 had been built. It was fast enough to set 16 world speed and altitude records between 1959 and 1962, with the capacity to carry a serious war load, and ungainly enough that Vietnam veteran Dick Anderegg joked it was proof you could make a brick fly if you put enough trust behind it. The Phantom went on to serve with the US Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, fight over Vietnam, hunt Iraqi radars during Desert Storm, fly reconnaissance missions into the 1990s, and finish its American military career as a QF-4 aerial target in 2016.