In a message dated 10/5/2007 10:03:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time, johnshinnick@comcast.net writes:

It was an uncharacteristically cool North Carolina spring day in 1961 when I saw my first Phantom in the flesh. I was in the squadron ready-room following an air combat maneuvering practice flight that pitted our agile A-4 Skyhawks against our next-door neighbor's more powerful F-6 Skyrays.

Typically, the debriefing went from mutually agreeable benchmarks of initial conditions and first maneuvers before degenerating into fanciful recollections of "the kill" and finally boastful predictions for the next time we locked our trusty scooters into head-to-head combat. No doubt to spare himself the pain of further hyperbole, the duty officer interrupted to tell us that a Phantom had just landed and was parked at the base of the tower.

It was roughly a quarter of a mile from our hanger to the tower, but even at that distance, the visiting aircraft stood out in bold relief, a stunning apparition that I credited to some sort of atmospheric fluke. Its hunker, so unlike the nose-high stance of the Skyhawks and Skyrays that filled the air group's flightline, exaggerated the menace of its square-cut lines. It was, in alternate instants, squat and ugly then lean and beautiful. "Boy is that ever ugly," I said to my companions, who were equally caught up in the anticipation of what was to come. "Double ugly," I thought, but I felt a ripple of excitement that was borderline carnal.

The refueling truck finished its business during our approach, and several carloads of people arrived at the Base Operations building to join the growing clump of spectators who had come to gawk. The Wing Commander and his deputy were there along with the base commander and a raft of bird colonels. It was not the sort of company second lieutenants kept so we hung back, wishing all to hell that we could talk with the flight crew.

Presently, the pilot and radar officer sauntered out of Base Ops with that lazy swagger of a rock stars who know they're the cat's ass, performed the obligatory walk-around, then climbed aboard and strapped in as the starter cart roared into life.

First one, then the second engine spun up, together achieving a slightly unsynched idle whose discordant beat bathed the flightline with a purposeful presence. In no time, the canopies drew shut, the lineman signaled that the chocks were clear, and the plane glided forward effortlessly.

Cherry Point is a marvelous air facility, consisting of four primary 8,000 foot runways, each 300 feet wide, radiating at ninety degree increments from a 1000 foot square concrete pad called the "center mat". Effectively you have four 17,000 foot runways, each wide enough to handle an entire squadron of A-4s in line abreast, but in practice you take off from the center mat while landing aircraft touch down a mile and a half behind you. When you add taxiways, tie-down ramps, ordnance areas, and storage pads, not to mention base facilities that sprawl to a distance of five miles from the tower, you're talking about a physical plant whose size and scope would make a fair-sized dent most anywhere.

The Phantom was a match for her stage, swinging in a wide right hand arc onto the center mat. The half-high sun splashed off the canopies and the musical note grew quieter as the bird drew away. Not another engine turned up anywhere on the base, the hush adding to the sense of drama and unreality unfolding with such a painful slowness. The plane stopped and for a moment there was no sound as if it had been plucked up and away by an uncertain eddy of warming air. Then things began to happen with a rush.

An engine shrieked, expelling a visible torrent of kerosene richened wind. The sound even at this distance was excruciating - a host of martyrs venting terror and defiance in unison. It happened twice, each followed by a soughing sound. Leading and trailing edge flaps appeared, the droop finned stabilators rotated nose down, and an instant before the full furry of takeoff power broke over us, the plane began to move.

With no apparent change in sound, twin balls of gore erupted behind the aircraft and almost immediately the Phantom changed its stance to nose high. Bits and chunks of concrete danced in its wake, legs extended in the shimmering heat waves, and with a bound the monster was airborne. Almost immediately the wheels started up and were gone. The pilot eased the nose down, retracting the flaps as part of the process. We were held motionless by the pulsating roll of thunder, oblivious to everything save the wedge of light streaking northward at an astonishing rate.

Then it was in planform, driving straight up into a sky changing from mist-grey to charcoal tumescence as the dart neared the meridian. The roar eased--then stopped--injecting into the atmosphere an ominous feeling of dread, and suddenly the Phantom was nose-on, rocketing toward the flightline, its features growing at an incredible rate.

It passed us at least a hundred yards off and half as high, yet the detail of every rivet, the thin trace of an oil leak, the slight crazing in the windscreen were burned into my memory as the hurtling airplane froze as a quantum of time and space. Then it pitched nose high viciously, its 34,000 pounds of afterburning madness pounding the flightline with a gut wrenching thump before driving out of sight straight into the thunderhead’s maw, sucking its thunder into the void.

Rain began just as the plane disappeared from view adding a plaintive quality to the dying roar. Later, I was to learn that flying the Phantom was nothing special, but you couldn’t have told me that then...I was in love.