On 28 and 29 June 2013 the German Air Force bad farewell to one of its most favorite aircraft of all time, the F-4F Phantom II. The last flying unit with the F-4F, Jagdgeschwader 71 “Richthofen” opened its gate for the public to witness the German F-4s for the very last time before the EF-2000 Eurofighter takes its place. On Friday, about 3500 people visited Wittmund Air Base to see a large number of German Phantoms positioned in front of the shelters and to see the arrival of some of the visitors for the static show on Saturday. There were no flying activities on Friday. On Saturday thousands of people visited the air base and the weather was better. There was also some flying activity, but the photo possibilities were not as good as on Friday.

The weather was appropriate
Unfortunately on Friday the weather was appropriate to the sad occasion. It had started raining on Thursday morning and it was still raining heavily on Friday. The bad weather conditions caused two of the best visitors to cancel their trip to Germany. The Polish MiG-29 stayed home and a Greek F-4E stayed at Aviano Air Base, Italy, where it landed for a fuel-stop. Foreign visitors that did make it to Germany were Belgian F-16s, RAF Tornados, a RAF Hawk, two Spanish F-18s and a Danish T-17 Supporter.

Special schemes
For the occasion some F-4s were painted in special color schemes. Perhaps the best one was the 38+10 which received a beautiful green/grey 1970’s retro scheme with a very large registration number. A more striking ‘Phantom Pharewell’ scheme was used for the 37+01. This was the very first F-4F for the Luftwaffe and it received the inscription ‘first in and last out’ for this occasion. This F-4F is destined to become a gate guard for Wittmund Air Base in the future. Another beautiful scheme was used on one of the two Phantoms from the test-unit WTD-61 from Manching Air Base. The 38+13 had a nice black/orange scheme and had the text ‘Don’t let me die, I want to fly’ painted on its tail. Something that all 3500 visitors of the farewell agreed with.