I once saw an F4 on the trim pad, being run in Full Military Power and Afterburner on both engines for a very short time. Talk about impressive!
Yes, it is! But, that was routine for Navy F4s waiting for the Cat to trigger on the Kitty Hawk. It's loud for sure. Even if you are trying to sleep below the cats during flight ops. The ship vibrates from the jet motors! They would often launch them more or less in formation 1..2, during which time both F4s on the forward cats would be turning full military and AB simultaneously. Though I never saw it done personally, they would also launch two more off the angle deck for a flight of four. That meant 4 Phantoms at full military and AB rarin' to go, waiting for the cat officers to push the go button. I can almost feel that in my chest just thinking about it.
In the early 70s, El Centro, CA was the winter home of the Blue Angels; said so right on the big sign at the base entrance. There is a bombing range nearby, and our training squadron of A7s was "deployed" to El Centro for bombing exercises.
The Blue Angels were using F4s at the time and we had routine "air shows" between our sorties. One of the things that almost became routine is that they would come back in tight formation subsonic from wherever and buzz the ground crews at about 50-100 ft. We'd have our heads under the radome wrenching on something, and whosh-roar and shake your world time. Never-ever saw them coming. And, if you looked where the sound was (the natural response), they were already in the opposite direction, and by the time you turned around, the sky was blank, all you could see was the surrounding aircraft, hangars and a faint smoke trail. I think they were actually buzzing their own ground crew and anybody else were just unsuspecting bystanders. Definitely got your heart pounding.
The Navy F4s used ground start turbine vehicles we called huffers. They blew air at the turbine blades to get them spinning and compressing on their own. When they lit off, they were then self sustaining. You may have seen the Blue Angel pilots march in formation down the flight line, peeling off one at a time in front of their airplane, then approaching the plane and mounting it in unison.
The ground crews would get into showman act, driving the yellow huffers around in formation down the ramp and turning in unison toward the planes with a formation stop, hose hook up, simultaneous startup of the huffer turbine, all to some unheard cadence count. I never found out if they were serious or knowingly attempting comedy, but it was damn funny to watch, nonetheless. Not to belittle the skill need to do this, mind you. I don't remember seeing the ground crews do this at public shows.
Normally, the planes would all start up, taxi out to the run-up area in formation, do the run-up checks, then taxi onto the runway...in formation, wind up making big plumes of black smoke, hit AB and takeoff in formation. It was loud and awesome. We saw this so many times, it nearly became boring. (HA!) Then one time we watched the routine, they made all the black smoke at the end of the runway, and then taxied back...in formation and parked. That was odd... Then we noticed two of the planes had severe wing tip damage. Apparently, one of the plane's AB delayed lighting up...crunch! Hanger lights were on late into the night for several nights after that.
