The F-104 Starfighter: A Complex Aura of Death

The F-104 Starfighter was a single-engine supersonic interceptor aircraft that was both a record-breaker and an absolute liability. With nicknames like "the missile with a man in it," "the flying coffin," "hooligan," and "the widow maker," the F-104 had a complex aura of death complete with a futuristic appearance and a Mach 2.2 top speed. However, below its sleek facade laid numerous problems, which became apparent once the United States started exporting the F-104 around the world.

The Birth of the F-104 Starfighter

In the early 1950s, U.S pilots were engaged in combat in the skies above Korea. The Soviet pilots, along with their North Korean and Chinese counterparts, typically flew the new MiG-15, a tenacious agile little plane that has since gone on to become one of the most produced aircraft in history. The Americans counted the MiG-15 with their North American F-86 Sabre, the country's first swept-wing fighter. But while the F-86 was no slouch, a series of interviews with pilots by Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, Vice President of Engineering and Research at Lockheed Skunk Works, revealed that the American pilots predominantly favored having a smaller, faster aircraft with a higher altitude limit than the F-86. In short, they needed something more like the MiG-15 to successfully tackle the MiG-15.

After studying over 100 different aircraft layouts, Johnson and his team set about designing this new aircraft. They went for a light 5400-kilogram design with a single General Electric J79 turbojet engine. The US Air Force liked what they saw and invited three other companies, Republic Aviation, North American Aviation, and Northrop Corporation, to submit designs for a lightweight fighter. But Lockheed was well ahead at this point, and a contract to build two prototypes was signed on the 12th of March 1953.

Things moved rapidly, and just shy of a year after the contract was sealed, the first X-104 took to the skies on the 4th of March 1954 at the Edwards Air Force Base in California. At this point, the J-79 engine wasn't ready, so the two XF-104s were instead fitted with a right J-65 engine until the more powerful engine was completed. The first flight lasted just 21 minutes, which was less than planned after the aircraft experienced landing gear retraction issues.

The F-104's Record-Breaking Performance

When the F-104 burst onto the scene, it immediately broke several records and was the first aircraft to simultaneously hold the world speed and world altitude records. On the 7th of May 1958, an F-104 broke the world altitude record for a jet aircraft by flying to 27,811 meters (about 91,000 feet), while on the 16th of May 1958, the world flight airspeed record tumbled when a Starfighter hit 2259 kilometers an hour (1404 miles an hour) above Edwards Air Force Base.

In 1959, the altitude record was again smashed with an F-104 climbing to 31,513 meters (103,000 feet), followed by several unofficial flights over the following years where the aircraft was said to hit a final Height of 36,800 meters (121,000 feet). By the way, that's 270 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. At that height, You're also well into the atmospheric zone known as the stratosphere.

Add to this some quite astonishing time-to-climb records, culminating in a 30,000-meter (98,400 feet) record of 904.9 seconds in 1959, and you might be forgiven for thinking that the greatest aircraft the world had ever seen had finally arrived. But as we'll come to see in just a moment, speed is definitely not everything.

The F-104's Design and Features

This merciless speed demon came with an airframe constructed of Duralumin, along with some stainless steel and titanium. It had a rather radical trapezoidal wing design, a straight-edged and tapered wing layout that was swept back 26 degrees. The tips of these wings ended in a razor-sharp 0.4-millimeter edge that proved so dangerous for ground crews that the U.S Air Force mandated that protective guards be installed as soon as the aircraft landed. The thickness of the wings was also the reason that the fuel needed to be carried within the fuselage, and why the plane's landings were initially at speeds that would terrify even the most seasoned of pilots, around 287 to 296 kilometers (178 to 184 miles) per hour. It wasn't until the addition of the BLCS that this monster was brought under some resemblance of control while landing.

It had a wingspan of 6.63 meters (21 feet 9 inches) and a total length of 16.6 meters (about 54 feet 8 inches), making it considerably smaller than modern examples. The General Electric J79 turbojet came with 10,000 pounds of thrust and 15,600 pounds-force with afterburner, which is much less than what we have today but easily enough to shatter speed records left, right, and center.

Thanks to the aircraft's excellent thrust-to-drag ratio, the F-104 was capable of exceeding Mach 2.2 (2,459 kilometers an hour and 1,529 miles per hour), but it had a nasty habit of overheating the engine, so its operational speed was limited to Mach 2. The F-104 was the first aircraft to use the 20-millimeter M61 Vulcan autocannon with a 6,000-rounds-per-minute firing rate, meaning the F-104 would be out of ammo after just seven seconds of continuous fire. The aircraft could also carry two AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles on the wingtip stations that were later modified to include underwing pylons for additional armaments and a centerline pylon capable of carrying a nuclear weapon.

Another radical design feature of the F-104 was the ejector seat. Its downward-firing ejection seat did exactly as it sounds, which caused all manner of problems for low-level ejections. This fallout was used because there were limitations of the available ejection seat catapults at the time, and an astonishing 21 USAF pilots failed to escape safely because of this, including Ivan Kincheloe Jr., the first person to perform a suborbital space flight when his Bell X-2 rocket plane reached 38,470 meters (less 126,000 feet) in 1956 before being killed after ejecting from an F-104 in 1958. Not long after, the aircraft was fitted with the Lockheed C-2 upward-firing seat instead, and the concept of downward ejector seats fell completely out of fashion for good reason.

The F-104's Problems and Controversies

When the F-104 entered full service in 1958, it immediately experienced problems, namely with the J79 engine and the M61 cannon. These were deemed so significant that the entire fleet was grounded just three months into their fledgling careers. New J79 GE3B engines and three additional ADC units were installed. These small air data computers were used to compile data from the aircraft systems to determine the calibrated airspeed, Mach number, altitude, and much more. While these upgrades didn't fix all of the F104's problems, they certainly made the aircraft easier to fly.

But while the F-104 was receiving a much-needed structural facelift, the U.S Air Force was already having Second thoughts. Just to Show how quickly the times changed regarding military technology, the trend was already beginning to shift towards aircraft with much longer range that could carry considerably more weapons. The F-104, with its fairly limited arsenal and poultry combat range of 680 kilometers (420 miles), had neither. And before it had even had a chance to dance, it was being ditched for younger, better models. The initial USAF order of 722 was slashed to just 170. While after less than a year in service, the F-104s were transferred from the fighter interceptor squadrons to the three squadrons of the Air National Guard.

Despite the F-104 appearing to be on the brink of an early extinction, it saw sporadic use in several roles until 1969. In 1958, they were used during the Taiwan Straits Crisis when several 104s flew back and forth between Taiwan and mainland China as a way of flexing U.S marshal and also lending support to the breakaway island. Three years later, they were once again used as a deterrent when they took part in maneuvers during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, in which Soviet leaders delivered an ultimatum for all NATO troops and aircraft to leave the German capital. Not one to back down from a fight, JFK ordered more aircraft to the city, with the USAF said to be pleasantly surprised with the performance of the F-104, which outmaneuvered every aircraft in the vicinity. Suddenly, there was a bit of hope for the Starfighters.

The performance in Berlin led to a call-up a few years later during the Vietnam War, where they were used in air superiority and air support roles. Essentially, they were there to protect other aircraft, in particular, the F-105 Thunderchief and the EC121D Warning Star airborne early warning aircraft. The F-104s performed admirably in Southeast Asia but were rarely involved in aerial combat and left Vietnam without any recorded air kills, with a loss of 14 Starfighters. This was the last USAF combat operation that they were involved in, and in 1967, the units began to be replaced with the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom 2. Two years later, the last F-104 left the U.S Air Force, 11 years after their introduction.

While the use of the F-104 under the Stars and Stripes had been fairly limited, it saw considerably wider use when it was exported abroad and considerably higher levels of controversy. A consortium of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, along with manufacturers within each country, signed a contract to begin constructing a modified F-104 for the European crowd. This new aircraft, the F-104G, consisted of a more powerful engine, additional skin panels, and reinforced landing gear with larger tires and improved brakes. It also came with a more advanced radar system, electronic de-icing equipment for the air intake inlets, a larger drag chute, and an increased weapon capacity, now at 1,400 kilograms (3,000 pounds) in total. Seventeen separate companies were involved in manufacturing the F-104G in Europe.

The F-104's Legacy

Things started out as bad as they possibly could in Germany when, in June 1962, four F-104Gs crashed in formation while practicing for an air display, destroying all the aircraft and killing all four pilots. Sadly, that was just the start. Much has been said about just why the accident rates in Europe were so high. Was it because of the bad weather compared to the frequent clear sky climates that many pilots trained in in Arizona? Was it because European pilots had not kept pace with jet fighter developments? Or was it simply because the F-104 could be a maniacal bucking bronco? The reason was almost certainly a combination of all three, which led to a staggering 292 crashes and 116 German pilots lost to F-104 accidents.

Germany, Belgium, and Canada all experienced between 32 and 46 losses of their F-104s during their decades in service, which is shocking. But they were the extremes. Denmark, Japan, and Norway suffered losses of between 14 and 24, while the Spanish Air Force came out with a perfect record of zero losses. It's not immediately clear why there were such disparities between loss rates, but what was clear was that the Starfighter had the ignoble honor of having some of the highest loss rates of any aircraft in history.

In 1976, news broke that Lockheed had paid $22 million (around $119 million today) in bribes to foreign officials as part of the F-104G deals in Europe. Things worsened when it was revealed that in 1962, documents relating to the transaction had all been destroyed in Germany, where officials were said to have taken $10 million (85 million today) in bribes in return for signing contracts for 900 F-104Gs in 1961. As the scandal erupted, officials in Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia were also implicated, leading to Lockheed Chairman of the Board Daniel Horton and President Karl Kocchian resigning on the 13th of February 1976.

Conclusion

The F-104 may not hold a place in the hallowed aviation hall of fame, but it unquestionably played its role in the development of aviation. Sometimes you need to learn what not to do before the right path becomes clear. The F-104 seemed to have different problems throughout its life, from oscillations causing uncontrolled dives, T-tail fluttering, which occasionally tore off the tail, and problems with the brand new engine in the early days to issues with the variable thrust nozzle that could cause a sudden loss of thrust, afterburner blowout, and problems integrating into different air forces later on. This was an aircraft that was just plagued from the very start. But as we saw earlier, this was also an aircraft that shattered records when it broke onto the scene.

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