The F-4 Phantom was the U.S. Air Force’s fastest, highest-flying, and longest-range fighter, first flying on May 27, 1958, entering United States Air Force service in 1963, and being named Phantom II on July 3, 1959, during a ceremony at the McDonnell plant in St. Louis, Missouri, marking the company’s twentieth anniversary. By the end of production in 1985, McDonnell had built 5,068 Phantom IIs. F-4s saw combat in the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm, served in the air forces of eleven countries in addition to the United States, and became the first American aircraft to serve concurrently with the USAF, USN, and USMC. Both U.S. military flight demonstration teams, the Navy Blue Angels and the Air Force Thunderbirds, flew the Phantom II from 1969 to 1973. This F-4D Phantom II was manufactured by McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, Missouri, and was received by the United States Air Force on February 28, 1967. It served with the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany beginning in March 1967, with the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing at Royal Air Force Bentwaters in the United Kingdom in September 1973, with the 52nd Tactical Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base in April 1979, with the 401st Tactical Fighter Wing at Torrejon Air Base in Spain in September 1981, and with the 187th Tactical Fighter Group at Dannelly Field in Alabama in May 1983, before retiring from active service in July 1988. From August 1988 to January 2013 it was displayed at Dannelly Field in Montgomery, Alabama, and later at Fort McClellan, Alabama, before being relocated in February 2013 to Veterans Memorial Park in Florence, Alabama.