The McDonnell Aircraft Corporation (later McDonnell Douglas Corporation, now part of The Boeing Company) long ago established a well-deserved, worldwide reputation as developer and producer of extremely capable, high-performance fighter aircraft. Probably the best known of these was the incomparable F4H/F-4 Phantom II, of which more than 5,000 were manufactured and put into military service around the world. During less than two decades (between 1957 – 1975), McDonnell F-4s and other fighters set a host of speed and time-to-climb performance records in a variety of colorful military-sponsored projects with names like Sun Run, High Jump, LANA, and Streak Eagle. This is the story of those record-setting performances, the circumstances that motivated them, and the technology developments that enabled them.