RE: You Know You Want To...Lockheed F104 "Starfighter"

[Chris71]

30 per cent were lost in accidents? Jeez, that makes pizza delivery mopeds sound safe.

[Chris71]

30 per cent were lost in accidents? Jeez, that makes pizza delivery mopeds sound safe.

[dapprman]

HeMightBeBanned said:

Tango13 said:

Part of the reason so many european airfoces bought the F-104 was that they were bribed to do so! The Lockheed sales force considered a small suitcase full of cash to be a perfectly acceptable tool during a sales pitch.

Yep. Was going to post this but you beat me to it. F104 was totally unsuitable but bribery gets you a long way.

Yup - though Lockhead claimed the poor safety record for the German F104s was down to their converting screw/bolt/panel sizings from US imperial to metric ....

Not sure where the USAF accident records come from either as they rejected the plane.

[Justayellowbadge]

LotusOmega375D said:

300bhp/ton said:

thewheelman said:

I know Clarkson used to have a fighter plane in his garden, for that reason alone, no thanks!

Used too? Does he not any longer?

Didn't he have an EE Lightning, but got into trouble with the local Cotswold planning authorities over it?

He rented it for a few months. Was done for the publicity. Uncharacteristically.

[LotusOmega375D]

OdramaSwimLaden said:

Rockatansky said:

Pay for one??

You used to just have to hang around in Lincolnshire and wait for one to drop out of the sky.....

The original widowmaker; concieved many years before the the 996 GT2 arrived on the scene.

From wiki:

During the 1960s, the "Starfighter crisis" developed into a political issue, as many Lockheed F-104 Starfighters crashed after being modified to serve for Luftwaffe purposes – specifically for terrain, weather, and ground mechanic support issues. In Luftwaffe service, 292 of 916 Starfighters crashed, claiming the lives of 115 pilots and leading to cries that the Starfighter was fundamentally unsafe from the West German public, which referred to it as the Witwenmacher (widow-maker), fliegender Sarg (flying coffin), Fallfighter (falling fighter) and Erdnagel (tent peg, literally "ground nail").

Steinhoff and his deputy Günther Rall noted that the non-German F-104s proved much safer – Spain, for example, lost none in the same period. The Americans blamed the high loss rate of the Luftwaffe F-104s on the extreme low-level and aggressive flying of German pilots rather than any faults in the aircraft.[6] Steinhoff and Rall immediately went to America to learn to fly the Starfighter under Lockheed instruction and noted some specifics in the training (a lack of mountain and foggy-weather training), combined with handling capabilities (sharp start high G turns) of the aircraft that could cause accidents.

Steinhoff and Rall changed the training regimen for the F-104 pilots, and the accident rates quickly fell to those comparable or better than other air forces. They also brought about the high level of training and professionalism seen today throughout the Luftwaffe, and the start of a strategic direction for Luftwaffe pilots to engage in tactical and combat training outside of Germany. However, the F-104 never lived down its reputation as a widow-maker and was replaced much earlier by the Luftwaffe than other national air forces.

[collateral]

Tent peg!

The wings are incredibly sharp; so much so that special guards were made so the ground crew didn't cut themselves. I've actually run my finger across both edges of one in a museum.

[draeburn]

"ultimate garden feature"

Can't argue with that.....beats a few gnomes and a water feature

[gforceg]

[quote=rockymount]
Remember seeing a pair of F104 Starfighters at a Military Air Tattoo in South West England in the summer of 1970 - loudest things I've ever heard ........


Boscombe Down? I was probably there with my dad!
He once flew a Vulcan over my school on the last day of term. Now THAT was loud.
I've never been as popular again as I was that day...

[lost in espace]

A fast taxi in 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozIRwMhRVRY&fea...

[rockymount]

gforceg said:

Remember seeing a pair of F104 Starfighters at a Military Air Tattoo in South West England in the summer of 1970 - loudest things I've ever heard ........


Boscombe Down? I was probably there with my dad!
He once flew a Vulcan over my school on the last day of term. Now THAT was loud.
I've never been as popular again as I was that day...

Yep, most probably Boscombe Down - can remember Mungo Gerry had a number one hit at the time with "In the Summertime"

Edited by rockymount on Friday 14th October 14:41

[Lordbenny]

I'd park it next to my Lockheed SR-71, my Maccy-D F4 Phantom and my Saab JAS 39 Gripen

[thirsty]

hmmmmmmm ... fast in a straight line but couldn't make turns....

[droschke7]

Numeric said:

Anything nicnamed the "Widowmaker" and not for its prowess in combat has to be a bit of a scary beast - but I guess you would have to be looking at the context of the time. Have a friend who was a navigator on the Sea Vixen and I think he said half the airframes were lost and in those accidents half the crews were killed!! He ejected on his second flight!!! Makes climbing on my bike look very safe. But my god - what an amazing beast the F104 is!!

In actual fact only the German starfighter was called" the widowmaker" this due to the cheap and nasty Fiat jet engine they used. Comparatively it was like puting a Fiat 500 engine into a Rolls Royce. The article states that the F104 was the first aircraft to fly at mach 2 in actual fact this was the English Electric Lightning which was flying in 1955, 3 years before the F104.

[soad]

No engine?? No thanks

[droschke7]

As someone who used to work on lightnings and 104s I can tell that the wings are only there to keep the red and green navigation lights apart.

[Riggers]

droschke7 said:

In actual fact only the German starfighter was called" the widowmaker" this due to the cheap and nasty Fiat jet engine they used. Comparatively it was like puting a Fiat 500 engine into a Rolls Royce. The article states that the F104 was the first aircraft to fly at mach 2 in actual fact this was the English Electric Lightning which was flying in 1955, 3 years before the F104.

I meant the first to fly at a sustained Mach 2

[droschke7]

Riggers said:

I meant the first to fly at a sustained Mach 2

I'm ex 5 squadron the lightning could and did do that in fact some of the later models were even faster

[droschke7]

As someone who used to work on lightnings and 104s I can tell that the wings are only there to keep the red and green navigation lights apart.

[droschke7]

Numeric said:

Anything nicnamed the "Widowmaker" and not for its prowess in combat has to be a bit of a scary beast - but I guess you would have to be looking at the context of the time. Have a friend who was a navigator on the Sea Vixen and I think he said half the airframes were lost and in those accidents half the crews were killed!! He ejected on his second flight!!! Makes climbing on my bike look very safe. But my god - what an amazing beast the F104 is!!

In actual fact only the German starfighter was called" the widowmaker" this due to the cheap and nasty Fiat jet engine they used. Comparatively it was like puting a Fiat 500 engine into a Rolls Royce. The article states that the F104 was the first aircraft to fly at mach 2 in actual fact this was the English Electric Lightning which was flying in 1955, 3 years before the F104.

[7mike]

Why not just take the wings off all together, add a few more wheels, call it a car and have a go at the land speed record?

Oh, hang on...


http://www.landspeed.com/