Brigadier General Stephen Ritchie

[senna]

Been reading on the great phantom aces of the vietnam war. Multiple kills in one mission, interesting indeed. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Stephen_Ritchie

[senna]

  To be able to fly such a bad a## jet and rack some k#ls   

[senna]

  dont forget F-105s, thunk thunk!

http://www.burrusspta.org/themen2.html

[Rino]

I like this version a bit better 

[Elfie]

From a maintenance perspective.....the Phantom was a total nightmare.

[Grayeagle]

It was my honor to turn wrenches on 463 .. and a whole lot more, out at Udorn-Thani RTAFB.

Just somethin awesome about lookin down the line and seein the red stars on the vari-ramps.. 463 wasn't the only one.

Salute to the 'Mig Killers' ..just an awesome group of guys.

-GE
 Sgt Wild Willy Williamson long ago ..jammer driver on the best ECM load crew.
 We *rocked*

[Rino]

From a maintenance perspective.....the Phantom was a total nightmare.

     Depends which end of the bird you were working 

Now if GE's ECM guys would have stopped blaming the radar guys for their system failures...
that would be something! 

[Grayeagle]

I'll never forget openin the radome an seein .. in lead pencil ..'Thumped an Tweaked by the Midz Doperz' ... LOL.

or takin my boot off up on the backbone, and swingin it at the vertical stab up high,
..and havin the GIB say 'got signal!, it's fixed!'

LOL.

F-4D's ECM was ..er .. 'temperamental' .. ya .. that's it.

-GE

[wrongwayric]

I loved working on the phantom! Was a seat mech, also worked on all the cooling systems, cockpit and ecm. Only thing i didn't care for was all them dang phillips screws. Though i guess on the positive side i did get pretty good at using an easy-out. FOD in the cockpit was always fun to go hunt for, they'd write up that they'd lost there pen, we'd find 5 or 6 of them and ask them to identify there's.

[LePaul]

Isn't he flying in the Starfighter air show company now?  They fly the F-104...if you ever have the chance to hear one in person...by all means, do it.  Its a very very unique sound!

[Reschke]

I don't have any cool stories other than to say that I used to love watching them scream down the valley in Central Alabama about 200 feet. Until one day before Thanksgiving about 17 or 18 years ago I watched one impact on a ridge line after coming in to close to the tops of some pine trees. There were two F-4's that had been running around and playing tag all over the area before the crash.

The wings got sheared off when the plane flew into some pine trees on top of the crest and it all went into slow motion from my view as I watched the nose try to point up and the canopy from the GIB pop off and then the nose buried into the side of the hill and the plane exploded. They only found tiny pieces of the two guys in the plane. They brought in some Air Force SP's from Columbus to cordon off the impact area. Those guys stayed up on that hillside for 3 weeks straight while they combed the area looking for pieces off the plane. If you go up there now you can still find pieces of circuit boards, metal and occasionally some canopy material.