Around The Web - Three Gun F-4B

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.

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.

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!