Subject: New Fighter Series--McDonnell F-4 Phantom (44 of 50)

From: [email-masked]
Date: 12 Jul 94 01:21:08 GMT

>From [email-masked]

Next to Israel, Iran was the largest overseas operator of the Phantom.  
A total of 32 F-4Ds, 177 F-4Es, and 16 RF-4Es (plus 8 F-4Es borrowed 
from the USA and subsequently returned) were supplied to Iran before 
the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Islamic fundamentalist regime 
resulted in a cutoff of further arms supplies.  

The Shah of Iran had ambitious plans to use his country's oil wealth 
to make Iran into a major military power in the Persian Gulf region.  
The United States government actively supported the Shah's ambitions, 
hoping that his government would be effective counter to any Soviet 
expansionist intentions in the area.  As part of this expansion of 
Iranian military power, the Nirou Havai Shahanshahiye Iran (Imperial 
Iranian Air Force) placed a order for 16 F-4Ds in 1967.  A second 
batch of 16 more F-4Ds was ordered later.  

The first batch of F-4Ds arrived in Iran on September 8, 1968, with a 
total of 32 F-4Ds being ultimately delivered to the Imperial Iranian 
Air Force.  Iranian F-4Ds were used in several unsuccessful attempts 
to intercept Soviet MiG-25s that were spying on Iran.  The first 
combat use by Iran of the F-4D was in 1975 when Iran provided military 
assistance to the Sultan of Oman in actions against rebels.  One of 
these F-4Ds was lost to ground fire.  

In further pursuit of the Shah's ambitious goals, the government of 
Iran ordered 208 F-4Es from McDonnell during the early and mid-1970s.  
The first examples were delivered in March of 1971.  A total of 177 
F-4Es were delivered to the Imperial Iranian Air Force between the 
years 1971 and 1979.  However, in 1979, the growing unrest in Iran 
forced the Shah to flee his country and go into exile, and a fanatical 
Islamic fundamentalist revolution took over the government.  The new 
Islamic Republic of Iran immediately began to assume an anti-Western 
stance, and on February 28, 1979, the US government placed an embargo 
on further arms deliveries to Iran.  The remaining 31 F-4Es on the 
contract were never delivered.  

After Germany, Iran was the largest customer for the RF-4E, a unarmed 
reconnaissance version of the F-4E built strictly for export.  A total 
of 27 examples were ordered by Iran.  The first RF-4E destined for 
Iran rolled off the production line at McDonnell in St Louis in the 
late fall of 1970.  The first RF-4Es arrived in Iran in 1971.  Fifteen 
more RF-4Es were delivered in succeeding years.  However, the final 11 
RF-4Es destined for Iran were cancelled in February of 1979 for 
political reasons after the fall of the Shah.  

By the time that the Shah was forced to flee, Iran had 188 operational 
Phantoms.  However, the arms embargo against Iran imposed by the West 
caused a severe spare parts and maintenance problem.  Even the 
best-equipped units were often poorly trained and could not operate 
without Western contractor support.  The political upheavals caused by 
the fundamentalist revolution made the situation much worse, with many 
pilots and maintenance personnel following the Shaw into exile.  As a 
result, by 1980 the Islamic Republic Iranian Air Force (IRIAF) was 
only a shadow of its former self, and when Iraq attacked Iran in 
September of 1980, only 40 percent of the Iranian Phantom fleet was 
operational.  

The Iran-Iraq war began on September 22, 1980 with an Iraqi air attack 
on six Iranian air bases and four Iranian army bases.  It was followed 
by an Iraqi land attack at four points along a 700-kilometer front.  
Before the war ended in 1988, somewhere between 500,000 and a million 
people were dead, between 1 and 2 million people were injured, and 
there were two to three million refugees.  Although little-covered in 
the Western media, the war was a human tragedy on a massive scale.  

Air power did not play a dominant role in the Iran-Iraq war, because 
both sides were unable to use their air forces very effectively.  At 
first, IRIAF Phantoms took part in deep penetration raids against 
targets in and around Baghdad and supported ground operations at the 
front.  Fighter-vs-fighter combat was rather rare throughout the 
entire course of the Iran-Iraq war.  During the first phase of the 
war, Iranian aircraft had the fuel and the endurance to win most of 
these aerial encounters, either by killing with their first shot of an 
AIM-9 or else by forcing Iraqi fighters to withdraw.  However, at this 
stage in the war the infrared homing missiles used by the fighters of 
both sides were generally ineffective in anything other than 
tail-chase firings at medium to high altitudes.  In addition, most of 
the time, the APQ-120 radar of the Iranian F-4E Phantoms was 
inoperable because of the lack of spare parts caused by the arms 
embargo, which meant that the Sparrow missile could not be fired.  

Initially, Iranian pilots had the edge in training and experience, but 
as the war dragged on, this edge was gradually lost because of the 
repeated purges within the ranks of the Iranian military which removed 
experienced officers and pilots who were suspected of disloyalty to 
the Islamic fundamentalist regime or those with close ties or 
sympathies with the West.  Losses during the first 9 months of the 
Iran-Iraq war were estimated to be 60 Phantoms, with many more being 
out of action due to cannibalization or the lack of spare parts.  The 
effects of the arms embargo and the shortage of spare parts caused the 
number of Phantoms which were available for combat steadily to 
decrease, and at the beginning of 1983, only 12 to 35 Phantoms could 
be put into the air at any given time.  As Iranian capabilities 
declined, Iraqi capabilities gradually improved.  After 1982, Iraq 
managed to improve its training and was able to acquire newer and 
better arms from French manufacturers, especially the Dassault Breguet 
Super Etendard and the Mirage F-1.  The Mirage F-1 was capable of 
firing the Matra R-550 Magic air-to-air missile, which had a 140-degree 
attack hemisphere, a head-on attack capability, high-g launch and 
maneuver capability, and a 0.23 to 10-km range.  The Magic could also 
be launched from the MiG-21, and proved to be far superior than the 
standard Soviet-supplied infrared homer, the Atoll.  Mirage F-1s were 
reported to have shot down several Iranian aircraft with Magic 
missiles and as having scored kills even at low altitudes.  After 
1982, Iraq generally had the edge in most air-to-air encounters that 
took place, with Iran losing most of the few air-to-air encounters that 
took place after 1983 unless it used carefully-planned ambushes against 
Iraqi planes that were flying predictable routes.  The Iranians could not 
generate more than 30-60 sorties per day, whereas the number of 
sorties that Iraq could mount steadily increased year after year, 
reaching a peak as high as 600 in 1986-88.  

The Iranians found it extremely difficult to keep their Phantom fleet 
operational all throughout the Iran-Iraq war.  The Phantom is a very 
complex, maintenance-intensive aircraft, requiring 135 man-hours of 
maintenance in the shop for each hour in the air.  The lack of spare 
parts caused by the arms embargo plus the general lack of adequate 
numbers of trained maintenance personnel made things even worse.  A 
defecting Iranian colonel claimed that Iran's F-4 force was down to 
only 20 flyable aircraft by the end of 1986, with no RF-4Es still 
being operational.  

Iran was only able to keep its F-4s flying by scrounging spare parts 
and replacements from whatever source it could.  Israel secretly 
delivered Phantom spare parts to Iran, presumably thinking that by 
doing this it would help to keep Iraq occupied.  There were reports 
that Israel supplied critical spare parts for the Phantom's APQ-120 
radar, which made it possible to fire the Sparrow semiactive 
radar-homing missile.  In addition, Iran was able to purchase some 
arms supplies by buying them on the world market, either legally or 
illegally.  In August 31, 1984, an Iranian F-4 pilot defected with his 
aircraft to Saudi Arabia, and upon investigation his aircraft was 
found to have components that came from Israel and several NATO 
countries.  

Another clandestine source of arms for Iran was the United States.  
The United States government generally tilted toward Iraq during the 
initial stages of the war, and even supplied some intelligence to 
Iraq.  However, in an attempt to win the freedom of hostages held by 
pro-Iranian guerillas in Lebanon, the United States began a 
clandestine shipment of arms to Iran in 1985.  Most of these arms 
consisted of TOW and Hawk missiles, but there are reports that spare 
parts for the Phantom's APQ-120 radar were also delivered.  Israel was 
an important intermediary in these arms deliveries.  The story finally 
leaked out into the media in November of 1986.  It was later revealed 
that the money obtained in payment from Iran had been diverted to pay 
for arms supplied to the Contras in Nicaragua, in direct contravention 
of Congressional prohibition of such deliveries.  The revelation of 
this arms deal in the media was a major source of embarrassment to the 
Reagan administration and caused a constitutional crisis.  

On June 5, 1984, two Iranian F-4Es were intercepted by two Saudi 
Arabian F-15C Eagles when they appeared to threaten Saudi oil 
facilities, and one of the F-4Es was shot down.  This was the only 
time when one McDonnell product shot down another.  

Although Phantom availability remained quite low all throughout the
remainder of the Iran-Iraq war, as late as January of 1988, the
IRIAF was still able to mount rocket attacks during the tanker war in
the Gulf.  

When the war ended in 1988, the IRIAF probably had only a dozen or 
less Phantoms that were still in good enough condition to fly.  It is 
uncertain how many (if any) Iranian Phantoms survive in flyable 
condition today.  

The following is a list of USAF serial numbers of Phantoms delivered
to Iran.  All of these aircraft were new builds, with none being
diverted from USAF stocks.

67-14869/14876		McDonnell F-4D-35-MC Phantom 
67-14877/14884		McDonnell F-4D-36-MC Phantom 
68-6904/6911		McDonnell F-4D-37-MC Phantom  
68-6912/6919		McDonnell F-4D-38-MC Phantom  
69-7711/7726		McDonnell F-4E-46-MC Phantom 
69-7727/7742		McDonnell F-4E-47-MC Phantom 
71-1094/1101		McDonnell F-4E-51-MC Phantom 
71-1102/1115		McDonnell F-4E-52-MC Phantom 
71-1116/1129		McDonnell F-4E-53-MC Phantom 
71-1130/1142		McDonnell F-4E-54-MC Phantom 
71-1143/1152		McDonnell F-4E-55-MC Phantom 
71-1153/1166		McDonnell F-4E-56-MC Phantom 
72-0266/0269		McDonnell RF-4E-48-MC Phantom 
73-1519/1534		McDonnell F-4E-57-MC Phantom 
73-1535/1549		McDonnell F-4E-58-MC Phantom 
73-1550/1554		McDonnell F-4E-59-MC Phantom 
74-1725/1728		McDonnell RF-4E-61-MC Phantom 
74-1729/1736		McDonnell RF-4E-62-MC Phantom 
75-0222/0257		McDonnell F-4E-63-MC Phantom	
				Order cancelled in 1979
78-0751/0754		McDonnell RF-4E Phantom 
					Order cancelled in 1979, planes
					reduced to components.
78-0788			McDonnell RF-4E Phantom 
					Order cancelled in 1979, plane
					reduced to components.
78-0854/0864		McDonnell RF-4E Phantom 
					Order cancelled in 1979.

Sources:

  McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Since 1920: Volume II, Rene J.
  Francillon, Naval Institute Press, 1990.

  McDonnell F-4 Phantom: Spirit in the Skies.  Airtime Publishing, 1992.

  The American Fighter, Enzo Angelucci and Peter Bowers, Orion, 1987.

  United States Military Aircraft Since 1909, Gordon Swanborough and
  Peter M. Bowers, Smithsonian, 1989.

  The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft Armament, Bill Gunston,
  Orion, 1988. 

  The Lessons of Modern War, Molume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Anthony
  H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner, Westview Press, 1990.

Joe Baugher				AT&T Bell Laboratories
1000 E. Warrenville Road		Naperville, Illinois 60566-7013