Only Three Air Forces Still Fly the F-4 Phantom II, and Greece Has Just Lost Another
A Hellenic Air Force F-4E Phantom II crashed during its display at Athens Flying Week on 5 September 2026, killing both crew members, the Hellenic Air Force said, and leaving 127 Phantoms in service worldwide with Greece, Turkey and Iran.
A Hellenic Air Force F-4E Phantom II crashed at 14:55 local time on 5 September 2026, about two minutes into its solo display at the Athens Flying Week show hosted at Tanagra Air Base, north of Athens. Both crew members were killed and no spectators were hurt, the Hellenic Air Force said. The remainder of the weekend program was canceled.
The aircraft belonged to 338 Squadron of the 117th Combat Wing, based at Andravida Air Base. Footage of the accident published by Euronews, NBC News, Greek Reporter and The Aviationist shows the two-seater losing height in a fast, low turn before striking trees beside the runway and exploding in a closed industrial area. No parachutes were seen.
In its statement, the Hellenic Air Force said the aircraft "crashed 3 nautical miles southeast of the 114th Fighter Wing, resulting in the fatal injuries of the two crew members" and that "the causes of the accident are being investigated by a competent Air Force committee." GlobalMilitary.net has recorded the loss in its air force event log.
The crash reduces the Greek Phantom fleet from 17 to 16 aircraft. According to GlobalMilitary.net's air force inventory data, only three air forces still operate the F-4 in 2026: Iran with 63 aircraft, Turkey with 48 and Greece with 16, a combined 127 airframes, down from 128 before the accident.
The Hellenic Air Force fleet has contracted sharply since 2024. The inventory records 33 F-4Es in each year from 2020 to 2023 and 32 in 2024, before the figure fell to 17 in 2025, meaning the fleet was roughly halved during 2025. Greece plans to retire the Phantom around 2026 as the Rafale F3R and the future F-35A enter service, according to 19FortyFive.
The Turkish Air Force operates the largest Western Phantom fleet: 48 F-4E 2020 "Terminator" aircraft, modernized with Israeli assistance in the early 2000s with an Elta EL/M-2032 radar, new electronic countermeasures and structural reinforcement. All of them serve with 111 Filo at EskiÅŸehir Air Base. Turkey expects to fly the type until 2030, a decade past its original planned retirement, according to TWZ, 19FortyFive and Key.Aero.
The largest Phantom operator is Iran, whose 63 F-4D/E and RF-4E aircraft make the F-4 the country's most numerous combat aircraft type, ahead of the F-5E Tiger II (44) and the F-14 Tomcat (35); the MiG-29 and Su-24 stand at 30 each in the 2026 inventory. The Iranian figures are estimates. Sanctions make Iranian serviceability opaque, and an airframe on strength is not necessarily flyable; GlobalMilitary.net holds no figure for how many of the 127 remaining Phantoms are mission-capable in any of the three countries.
Iran has also lost Phantoms this year. GlobalMilitary.net's event log records an F-4 that crashed near Hamedan during a night training mission on 19 February 2026, in which one pilot was killed and one survived, and a second destroyed on the runway at Tabriz by an Israeli airstrike on 1 March 2026 during the 2026 Iran war.
For Greece, the accident comes in the final stretch of a retirement already under way; Turkey's Phantoms are set to remain in service until 2030. The cause of the crash remains undetermined pending the findings of the Hellenic Air Force committee.
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