Phantom Junker
From The Skybrary
The Phantom Junker is a gray CR-4P which you will sometimes encounter as an in-flight combat. When compared to a normal CR-4P, it has a considerably higher max speed, lower stall speed, more extensive firepower and higher maneuver. The Phantom Junker is also known as a Phunker.
[edit] Strategies
[edit] Phantom Junker's Strategy
A Phantom Junker usually just switches between zipping away and lolling back into your area. Its most hostile tactic is to pull an Airbrake and line you up in its arc. This can cause some problems, especially if you're slow or have low maneuver; in either case an Afterburner will get you out. The Phantom Junker is also capable of executing the Wingover maneuver and uses it to try to squirm out of firing arcs of planes behind it.
[edit] Your Strategy
The best idea, of course, is to get behind the Phantom Junker and pound it. Its high maneuver makes it unnerving to fire at, since you won't see many bullets popping on it. However, you can shoot it down relatively quickly, because it has little armor. When firing at it, be careful of its Airbrake tactic (mentioned above). This is truly an easy fight, and you should be able to end it quickly.
[edit] Victory
Beating a Phantom Junker is not terribly impressive. In fact, for the most part, they are just annoying. They carry a high bounty+bonus and CP, for their simplicity. You'd have preferred a real fight, I'm sure.
Recently the Phantom Junker has been rebuilt and is now a very real threat to lower tier planes.
[edit] History
The history of the Phantom Junker is based almost entirely on rumor. One rumor claims that back in the Old World the Devs created the Phantom Junker as a test plane which they flew, attracting hundreds of pirates a time. Thorne, a Skyrate often associated with the Red Faction, has claimed to have fought it, pre-reset, before it was implemented in the New World. It appears in Thorne's short-story "Zero Sum Combat" as the last of a pirate swarm attacking Thorne's White Rose (a Barracuda) and then his Yellow Canary of Death (an Ingersoll). In the story, Thorne ends the fight by crashing into the Phantom Junker.
