Talk:Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
An event mentioned in this article is a May 18 selected anniversary
This article, unfortunately, repeats several myths about the F-104. For one thing, it is an excellent dogfighter when flown by someone who knows to work the vertical. Pilots of other fighters in dissimilar aircraft exercises often accused the F-104 of cheating, since it kept going up and down instead of making turns like a real airplane. One F-8 pilot reported following a smoke trail to track down an F-4 (which used the same J-79 engine) and realizing he was in trouble when the F-104 flying close formation with the F-4 pulled up into a climb the F-8 couldn't match. He was still trying to spot the smaller plane when it made a diving attack from behind and scored a simulated kill.
Additionally, ferry range with 4 drop tanks is around 1500 NM at best-range cruise. Remarkably, by climbing to high altitude and accelerating to Mach 2 the plane could achieve almost the same range, due to the inherent low drag in those conditions.
None of the nicknames listed were actually used by F-104 pilots, especially "Widowmaker." This was given to it by others, largely due to the unfortunate German accident rate early in the plane's deployment there. (Note that during this same period Spain lost *none* of its F-104s.) Once Germany changed its training program their accident rate for the F-104 dropped to well within the same range as that for other jet fighters of the period.
What pilots of the F-104 prefered to call it is "Zipper."
I actually wrote an article on this aircraft. A copy is posted at: http://www.dcr.net/~stickmak/JOHT/joht12f-104.htm
Rod (Stickmaker) Smith
- Well then, get your hands out of your pants and fix the article! :-) But seriously, you'd likely do a better job than anybody else on some of these details. Stan 05:27, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
- I think you'll find that it was not the German Democratic Republic (DDR, a.k.a East Germany) that bought the Starfighter, but in fact the West German Airforce. Such a glaring error in this external article does tend to throw the credibility of the rest into some doubt, at least for me. Graham 02:47, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Air does not "think," and cannot be "fooled!"
I don't think the high crash rate of the German Starfighters can be blamed entirely on pilot training. As i recall, Luftwaffe wanted an all-purpose jet (which the Starfighter was not designed to be) which resulted in a large number of extras being put into the F-104G. The result was a jet that was significantly heavier than the original and consequently harder to handle. An example that was given was the increased take-off speed. That speed was in fact so high the pilots had no more than two seconds after take-off before theit landing gear would rip off. Also, the F-104G was constantly updated with new equipment and new procedures. Sometimes those came so fast that pilots had no more than a day to learn a new procedure before the next one arrived. Another reason for decreased crash rates in later years were changes in maintainance. Once Luftwaffe started using spares from domestic production instead of those imported from the US, reliability improved significantly. --Qualle (talk) 10:39, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Role
I would change the Role to Single-Seat Multi-Mission Fighter instead of Fighter-Bomber. But opinions on this are open.