WARFARE WITHOUT WEAPONS
FOR ME, THE MCDONNELL RF-4C WAS JUST ONE MODEL OF AGING PHANTOMS I FLEW AS A BACKSEAT FLIGHT TEST ENGINEER DURING THE 1980S AT EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE.
Although familiar with the legendary combat record of the F-4C, D and E, I knew little about the RF-4C’s mission beyond the tactical reconnaissance community’s mantra of “alone, unarmed and unafraid.”
The photoreconnaissance version of the F-4 was critical to air power thinker John Boyd’s “OODA loop” for combat planning: observe, orient, decide, act and repeat. “You can’t even get started on the OODA loop if you can’t observe,” said retired RF-4C pilot Brig. Gen. Rudi Peksens, “and that’s where reconnaissance comes in.” Before satellites and remotely piloted aircraft, aircrews put their lives in danger to collect information.
Prior to the RF-4C, the McDonnell RF-101 Voodoo ruled the low-level reconnaissance skies, but that aircraft’s less sophisticated cameras limited it to daylight-only operations. Designed to overcome the RF-101’s shortcomings, the RF-4C was a major overhaul from earlier F-4 models. For prototypes, engineers lengthened the nose on two F-4Bs to accommodate advanced radar and camera systems: film, infrared and side-looking radar. The long-nose variant also became the basis for the later F-4E model. The first production RF-4C flew in May 1964, as the Vietnam War was beginning to ramp up. “The RF-4 was perfect for its time,” Peksens said. “[It] gave us supersonic speed, two engines and an airplane built mostly of steel that could take a licking and keep on ticking.”
Kirk Ransom, fresh from pilot training, arrived at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina in September 1964 to train with the first cadre of RF-4C pilots. The U.S. Air Force initially funneled inexperienced pilots like Ransom into the rear cockpit as pilot
