"The Joys of High Tech (http://www.dcr.net/~stickmak/JOHT/joht12f-104.htm): Keep in mind that the low-altitude record for flight speed was set in the Seventies with a slightly modified Starfighter. Which was owned by a civilian group, Darryl Greenameyer's Red Baron racing team. They went to the high desert and set the record at 988 mph, averaged from four passes, each at a height above ground level of less than a hundred meters. The record requires that this be done without landing or exceeding an altitude of 300 meters between passes. On one set of passes the plane averaged just over 1000 mph, but due to a fault in the timing equipment this is not official.
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From: David Lednicer <
[email protected]>
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military
Subject: Re: Flying F-104´s private owners
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 18:12:57 -0800
Darryl Greenamayer, ex SR-71 test pilot and former Reno racer (F8F Bearcat) used to have a privately owned F-104 which I think he flew out of Mohave. Unfortunately, I believe it was destroyed sometime around the early 1980's when, according to the newspaper, he had a hydraulic failure and couldn't get the landing gear down.
Regarding Darrell's 104, it was called the "Red Baron". True he couldn't get the landing gear down. But the emergency retraction wouldn't work wither. His was a -G model and modified quite a bit, just to set the civilian speed record. Interesting video of it. Not much left after he got done with it.
Darryl's RB-104 flew for the first time in the fall of 1976. It was a combination of pieces from every model of -104, so you can't really give it a designator. It was largely built at Van Nuys, but the FAA wouldn't let him fly it out, so he trucked it to Mojave and flew it there.
He first tried to break the FAI 3 km world (not civilian - WORLD) speed record that fall, but one timing camera didn't work and the record was disallowed. He came back the next fall and on October 24th he broke the old F-4A Sageburner record by going 988.26 mph. This record still stands. He next was going to break the FAI altitude record, which had just been pushed up by a MiG-25. On his last test flight, in early 1978, the right gear wouldn't lock down. Running out of fuel, with the sun going down, he was forced to punch out over the Edwards AFB bombing range. The wreckage was hauled back to the Mojave boneyard and was still there in 1987, when I stole some pieces of it. I have since heard that it has been removed, probably to a junkyard......
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Back to Greenamyer-I can't believe that nobody on this forum is a Checkered Flag Club member. Otherwise, you would have heard Bob Gillilland (check spelling) give ALMOST the whole story about the RF-104 speed attempt. Who is Bob Gilliland? Only Darryl's old boss and the original SR-71 test pilot. He was also listed as the "primary pilot" on the FAA paperwork and Darryl was the "backup" since Darryl was in trouble with the FAA back then. Mr. Gilliland "called in sick" so Darryl could fly, since this was entirely Darryl's program. Kelly Johnson said the airplane could never go that fast and was shocked that it did. The only thing I recall he said about the engine was they ran it hotter than normal. No mention of crashing on purpose. I heard the rumour that the engine was stolen from the Canadians but Bob had no comment. The fuselage was a tooling mockup that was never meant to fly but the only difference was that it was put together with something like pop rivets, and all they did was drill them out and replace them with the regular rivets and they had a totally stock fuselage. Don't know about the rest of the airplane........
Ron Henning