I've always wondered why the Navy never used the gun nosed Phantom. I always thought it was because of visibility over the nose, but that didn't make sense because they used the RF's on the deck. In talking with those knowledgable about things like this, it turned out to be a center of gravity issue. In discussing further, a set of canards could have solved that issue. So, using this as a backdrop, I came up with what a gun nosed F-4 would look like. I modeled the canards after the ones actually put on an F-4, I removed the nose pitot probe and put them back on the leading edge of the tail like the original design, and I added the TISEO camera on the leading edge of the wing. The L designation was never used but was planned for various Phantom incarnations that never materialized, so I went with that. This model has been collecting dust for awhile, so I decided it needed to be finished off and removed from the shelf of doom. Here are the results.
