F-4C 8thTFW Operation Bolo

F-4Cs – 8thTFW Ubon Operation Bolo - By Crab_02 and Mike Druzolowski

53 F-4C serial numbers which actually operated with the three squadrons of the 8th TFW at Ubon as of 01 January 1967. From these were drawn the aircraft to fly Col. Robin Olds' famous Operation Bolo mig killing mission the next day on 02 January.

Description: This package is two parts – a texture add-on for the 1966 F-4C pack available at CombatAce for the 433rd/497th/555th TFS which is the bulk of the serial numbers assigned in Jan 67, and a separate aircraft representing the "slicknose" variant of the F-4C seen at this time. Enclosed are two QRC-160 ECM pods attached to the left outboard pylon (the pylon does not appear when the ECM pod is assigned in a mission as it does when A/G ordnance is selected, so the pylon is attached) – one is camouflaged and the other white. Wing tanks are available in the 1966 F-4C pack. Also enclosed is an update to the 1966 base .LOD and wing tank texture updates. (Hey…I said that this was an ongoing project didn’t I….?) The new loadout.ini files have a [AirToAirLongRangeBolo] entry that can be used for a Bolo mission. Oh, and I made the ECM pod/pylon match the same weight/drag as the opposite wing tank so the bird flies straight – although when the tank is jettisoned you’ll be loaded asymmetrically again…..

Historical bit: FY1964 USAF F-4Cs coming off the production line for USAFE had the F-4J-style nose radome installed, and these started to become available to PACAF units late in 1966. This radome gave a small performance enhancement due to a bit less drag, but was removed early in 1967 as the AN/APR-25 radar homing and warning system was installed into the old IR-sensor housing. It is estimated that perhaps a quarter of the F-4Cs at Ubon at the time of Operation Bolo were configured this way, so the airplanes are not broken down by squadron. The airplanes flown for Bolo from the Wolfpack still retained the 1966-style Navy LAU-17 inner pylons (although one source that I found said that only F-4Cs with the new MAU-12 pylons were flown for Bolo, but photographic evidence tends to disprove this). All of these planes were modified to carry a single QRC-160 ECM pod on the right outer pylon (seen on the USAF A/G weps pylon as well as the early Navy pylon with the adapter (the latter is not presented here), and a single 370 gal drop tank on the left outboard station for the mission, and this became standard in Southeast Asia during much of 1967, until the inboard pylons were modified to accept the pods later in 1967.

As before, I made this package for the post-October 08 patched version for Wings over Vietnam (which is what I'm flying). Textures are again 1024 pixel resolution to help frame rates on modest systems (like mine) - so view the external views at arm's length, not extremely close-up please. Versions for SF2 with higher resolution textures are sure to follow.

My sincere thanks (in addition to Crab and TK) go to Sundowner - who originally shared his F-4 texture templates with me and what I started with originally, and also to drdoyo for his 1024 templates which helped, Ravenclaw_007 for the kind permission to include his super Martin Baker ejection seat in this package, and to Old Diego for kind permission to include his superb pilots, and to X Ray who did the superb pilot repaints (and whose name keep forgetting in the readmes).. Also my thanks to Mike France and Alan Howarth who know more about F-4s than I ever will!

Please contact me for any problems or issues - we'll do our best to correct them and make this even more authentic for what's to come. PM me at Combatace or E-mail at mppd@att.net please.