Paintshopped to prevent someone knicking the image?

Didn’t the RAF do some segregating by country? Ceratinly some units were from varuious commonwealth countries, a form of segregation.

Are you seriously suggesting having squadrons that were nominally Australian/Canadian/New Zealand etc manned was equivalent to the segrigation of blacks in the US armed forces? :rolleyes:

Hendon should have a 1980s copy of the 3430 on file somewhere – Phantom-all three marks of Phantom in use with the RAF were listed separately by type including the non-mythical Phantom F3 – later copies had it transmogrifying into the F-4J(UK) – probably in much the same way that we were told not to refer to the Eurofighter 2000 as the Typhoon – until everyone did.

RAF AD Phantoms only

Alpha fit, no tanks, maybe podded gun but not much used
Bravo fit, centerline tank only
Charlie fit, wing tanks only, normally podded gun
delta fit, centerline and wing tanks

A4408 – F4 with no tanks, four sidewinder, four skyflash no podded gun, eight missiles with all-round capability

More commonly used for ‘Bear’ hunting Charlie four-four-plus-Eight or Delta four-four-zero-eight

With sincere thanks to F4 Guru Mark- I think this is about as concrete as you can get. I would suggest the RAF Historical web site has merely scoured the net for information and assumed that “airliners .net” or Fujimi know better than an official Publication

How can I put this? You’re wrong, the RAF website is correct, when the F-4J (UK) entered service in the early 1980s at least some official paperwork described them as the Phantom F3 – unless you think the Scopie bible the AP3440 is not official enough for you. The F2 (ADV) Tornado had not even entered service at this point, so no-one worrying about the F3 designation at the time. Subsequently the nomenclature was changed to F-4J(UK), but that’s irrelevant, for a while they were Phantom F3s, though as I’ve previously said all RAF F-4s were known as Alpha through to Delta fits in the Air-defence world.

Excuse me if this sounds a little tetchy but I was there, and rather like the thread on the F1-11 the ‘experts’ seem to to know better than those of us who were.

AP3430 referred to the F3 Version – though to be honest we knew them by their fits and we knew 74 were a bunch of misfits that needed it in inches*

*The QNH or QFE that is (memory’s going)

so according to the Völkischer Beobachter the scrapping of the Sea Harrier was all down to the RAF……..didn’t know they made defence policy, my understanding was that the GRs were binned in favour of the Tonkas because they had little airframe hours left and had been worked to destruction in Afg – still, I’m sure the ‘journalists’ at the VB know better

Sabrina after the link catchers on Hunters – which I’m sure have a perfectly innocent origin in it’s self