20 December 2004: The 20th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Wing, Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, the last operational squadron in the United States Air Force flying the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, was inactivated. The squadron’s F-4F fighters were sent to The Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona.
© 2015, Bryan R. Swopes
F4F?
The F-4F was a Luftwaffe variant. The 20th trained Luftwaffe pilots.
Oh, we used the F-4F until summer 2013. They were nicknamed “Luftverteidigungsdiesel” (“Air-defence-diesel”) due to their enormous exhaust plume. 😉
I flew off Andravida Airbase in Greece full or part-time for 17 years, where the F-4E Phantom IIs were based. “Iniochos” Multinational Military Exercise is a Top Gun Event held each year at Andravida. I’ve had the chance to occasionally talk with some of the fighter pilots who stayed at our hotel. Armed forces elements from Greece, the U.S., Canada, Cyprus, France, Israel, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates participated in the exercises. I never liked getting calls for fire fighting initial attack when the operations were on for fear that we might have been going to the scene of a crash. That happened previously. Even without that concern there were still a lot of fast movers low level but a heck of a lot faster than us.
20th FS officially in name only, actually it was the1st GAF training squadron, a autonomous unit of the German Air Force at Holloman AFB.