As soon as this is up and running, we will invite you to visit and “like” his page.Ĭomes A Soldier’s Whisper, remembering our history and the men and women who served. There were many stories shared with his son over the years of special stateside testing back in the day.ĭavid is working on a website and creating an F-4 PHANTOM COCKPIT PHOTOS Facebook page. He was based in Fort Meade, Maryland where the C.I.A. Lets jump into the cockpit and find out what makes this bird click. The Noise You Hear is the Sound of Freedom The sierra hotel video in this post is possibly the coolest F-4 Phantom footage ever filmed. The F-4 Phantom II is an absolute classic from the Cold War era. David’s father served in the Army Chemical Center with the Army in the 1950’s for special top secret testing. The footage features USAF F-4 and RF-4 Phantom IIs flying extremely low with J79 noise (along with some spectacular sonic booms) and no background music. He also had a custom built trailer designed to transport the F-4 Phantom for display and taking photographs at air shows throughout the country. ~ observation by a visitor to The Bone Yardĭavid spent years stripping the paint, patching the holes and reconditioning the jet with new paint.
They showed a part where they cut up the B-52’s, all my pilot buddies were silent, I think if each of them were alone, they would have been crying.” I saw a documentary on the aircraft graveyard. I think that’s why not many of the pilots I’ve talked to have ever really tried to visit. It’s kind of like an elephant graveyard, mysterious, exciting, a place where all kids dreams go. “Every pilot I have ever talked to wants to visit but never does. General Robin Olds was a combat leader and fighter ace pilot in WWII and also flew in the 55th Fighter Wing Squadron in VIETNAM. The first mission was in 1966 and the last was in 1989. She was part of the 432nd TRW and 555th Fighter Wing squadrons. David’s F-4 was missing panels and had lots of holes in it from her past war missions of which there were many. There are over 4,000 planes in storage, most now from the VIETNAM era. The father and son purchased the nose of an F-4 Phantom jet 8 years ago from a scrapyard outside of The Bone Yard, an aerospace maintenance and regeneration center in Arizona where old military jets are stored. The history of the aircraft is being researched.I had the pleasure of meeting David Garbe and his son at the Geneseo Air Show last weekend standing with pride in front of their restored F-4 Phantom jet which flew on many missions in VIETNAM. Slowly, pieces began to arrive, and other crews, as well as the disassembly crews, put it back together, for a permanent home at Sonoma county. It was very hard as the aircraft was built to take a lot of abuse, and was not easy to dismantle. In 1994, crews of Pacific Coast Air Museum members spent many hours on the Army base, in desolate conditions, taking the F-4 apart. Pacific Coast Air Museum was one of the museums selected to receive one of the aircraft. Army officials finally decided to get rid of the aircraft and looked for places to dispose of them.Īs fate would have it, two museums got word of the aircraft and applied for acquisition. The aircraft sat for several years, along with a twin F-4, way out in the middle of nowhere on the base.
The jet was going to be used as a “crash and burn” victim, being torched for fire fighters to practice putting out aircraft fires.
After its service life was over, the jet was assigned to the Sierra Army Depot, on Highway 395, north of Reno. Pacific Coast Air Museum´s F-4 was an Air Force jet. Only in reserve units, like the “Wild Weasels”, the F-4 will soon disappear from active service, being replaced by the more agile, faster, and electronically superior F-16s and F/A-18s. The workhorse of Vietnam was the F-4 Phantom II.
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