Last week, I shared the post about the unique Chico the Gunfighter F-4E configuration on Twitter. This received a comment from David M. Vanderhoof, the official Airplane Geeks podcast historian, blogger at What Just Flew By!, and all around nice guy.
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| Source unknown. |
While the Air Force got their internal gun armed Phantoms into Vietnam with the F-4Es, the Navy and Marines stuck with the gun-less F-4B, and -4J models. While multiple Navy and Marine squadrons would use the HIPEG 20mm gun pod (Mk 4 Mod 0 pod with Mk 11 twin barrel 20mm cannon), only the Marine aviators of VMFA-122 would operate the F-4B with three underwing cannon pods.
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| Mk4 cannon pod mounted on an A-4. Public domain image via Wikipedia |
Unfortunately, I can find neither any further good illustrations of the triple-pod F-4B, nor the original source of the illustration. A few dedicated scale model makers have done some fantastic kit bash builds to illustrate the configuration (like this one) but that’s the best I could find.
Still a fun reason to go look up more F-4 pictures!