F-4S-44 Phantom

They built 5195 of these bad boys by the time they shut down the production line in 1979. That's a long, long production run for a fighter.

It had engines that smoked quite a bit for a fighter. Though you couldn't see it from the side it was very visible if you were looking at it head on. For example, you can't see a fighter much more than five miles away. However, if you were intercepting another F-4 head to head, you could often spot it at greater distances in the middle of a dark smudge of exhaust on the horizon. The farthest distance at which I have been able to spot an F-4 is at 26 miles head on against a background of bright white sunlit clouds.

In 1972, this particular aircraft shot down a MiG-21 over North Vietnam with an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile, like the one beside it. The Sidewinder is a heat missile that steers toward the infrared color of burning jet fuel. That can take the heater right up the tailpipe of bad guy jets.