(Image: Jon Wickenden; Phantom XV499 effectively stored at Hixon before scrapping)
Like most McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms formerly in RAF service, the story of XV499 didn’t have an especially happy ending. Pictured here in April 2014, stored in a dismantled state at Hixon, the abandoned Phantom FGR.2 was scrapped that same year after (it is understood) failing to reach its asking price at auction. On the plus side, it managed to hang on longer than most, and its empty cockpit section was saved from the wreckers and moved to Bruntingthorpe.
Thunder and Lightnings documents XV499’s career with an extensive number of UK fast jet squadrons from the time it entered service in the 1970s to its last flight in 1992. Over the years the warplane flew with Nos. 6, 19, 23, 29, 41 and 92 Squadrons. She also spent a brief spell with Phantom training squadron 228 OCU in 1984 and ended her flying days with No. 74 Squadron at RAF Wattisham – where so many spares-recovered F-4s met their fate.
(Image: Jon Wickenden)
Phantom XV499 made her final flight to RAF Leeming on October 5, 1992. There, the aircraft spent the following decade in use as a weapons loading trainer but was earmarked for scrapping in 2001. Towed to a quiet corner of the North Yorkshire base and left to the mercy of the elements, the defunct F-4 avoided the inevitable for several more years as the Yorkshire Aviation Museum reporedly toiled to secure the grounded warplane for preservation.
Unfortunately it wasn’t to be and in 2013 Phantom XV499 was moved to the old wartime airfield at Hixon in Staffordshire. Once there, the neglected jet was stored at the end of an abandoned runway in a de facto aircraft graveyard, amid a motley collection of gutted helicopters and the hulks of several C-130 Hercules transports.
(Image: Jon Wickenden)
Its new owner, a parts supplier for the UK Ministry of Defence, had reportedly planned to restore the Phantom as a gate guard at its premises. But at some point these plans clearly changed and Phantom XV499 was scrapped.
Though its cockpit section was saved, its a bitter sweet conclusion for those who worked hard over the years to prevent the airframe – which for decades defended UK skies from potential Russian intruders – from being destroyed. (Browse more in our Phantom archive here.)
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