McDonnell Douglas' Greatest: F-4 or F-15?

With the recent selection by Singapore of the F-15T, it got me thinking. Two of the greatest fighters in the free world of the past 30 years are both from McDonnell Douglas…..the F-4 Phantom and the F-15 Eagle. For years the F-4 has been regarded as the finest McDonnell Douglas fighter to ever fly in terms of overall success in all aspects. The F-15 is a great fighter no doubt, but it hasn’t quite reached that legendary status as the Phantom has….granted the Phantom is a bit older and had more combat experience thus promoting this legendary image. The Eagle though is truly a successor to the Phantom (in my opinion a much more suitable replacement for the F-4 than the F-16 could ever hope to be), and while we know it outperforms the F-4, it also has some other interesting qualities. The production run for this fighter is almost unprecedented. It has been flying since 1972, and remains in production (even though in very small numbers now) even today. That’s a whopping 33 years of production, and it will probably reach the 40 year mark before it’s all said and done. The Phantom had what was at the time a huge 23 year production run counting Mitsubishi-built examples (last one built in 1981 I think with the last MDD bird coming out in 1979).

The Eagle has no doubt seen a lot of combat with the 1982 Bekaa Valley Conflict, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the operations over Iraq and Bosnia in the mid 90’s, Operation Allied Force, and then more recently Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. It has an unmatched record in air-to-air combat with no losses attributed to air combat, and it has proven itself to be a very capable attack aircraft with the debut of the Strike Eagle during the 1980’s.

The Phantom’s story is of course well-known to us all with combat experience from Vietnam, to the 1970 War of Attrition, to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1974 Conflict over Cyprus, the 1982 Bekaa Valley Conflict, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and the operations over Iraq and Bosnia in the mid 90’s. It has proven to be capable of performing just about every mission you could ask a fighter to do. It doesn’t have a perfect air combat record like that of the Eagle, but it arguably came out the victor during most of the air combats it fought in. It’s air-to-ground prowess is equally amazing.

So with all that said, has the F-15 Eagle usurpped the F-4 Phantom as the greatest overall McDonnell Douglas fighter?

Whichever one is chosen more it is still quite easy to say that the F-4 and F-15 are two of the greatest fighter planes ever built. Both have a pedigree of excellence.