A surprising fuel leak in an already veteran Greek F-4E Phantom II fighter

@DefAviation ES 9·22·2022 · 20:55 0

As with cars, when older is a plane more things are prone to fail, and those related to fuel are among the most delicate.

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An example of the possible ailments of the old aircraft has been seen in a video posted this afternoon by UK Aviation Movies, which shows one of the 18 veteran McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantom II, updated to the AUP version, still in active with the 338 "Ares" Squadron of the Hellenic Air Force, based on Andravida. Greece is one of the few air forces that still has these aircraft in hunting functions, along with those of Turkey, Egypt and Iran. In the images, is seen a military truck supplying the plane, which has a leak in the port wing, through the fuel expulsion duct in flight:

Truth be told, this scene could have been shot pretty much the same at any time in the last 40 years, as the Steyr tanker is an early 1980s model, while the early F-4E of the Hellenic Air Force were delivered in 1974.

As we see in this capture of the video, the plane began to lose fuel through the fuel dumper that it has on the wing edge of the port wing.

Hellenic Air Force personnel solved the problem by putting a bucket at the leak site. "I got the sense like the ground crew were used to seeing this", the author of the video says in the description. Considering how many years these planes have been in service, this may not be the first time something like this has happened.