Anyone here fly the F-104?

[Ewan Whosearmy]

Was it really the Widow Maker people would have you believe, or just not a great machine to let the young and inexperienced loose in?

[maxburner]

I suspect that if you looked closely at the stats for, say, the Lightning or Harrier then the 104 would not look so bad.

I would guess that the losses were the result of several factors. The GAF had little experience of sophisticated aircraft after reforming post WW2 and the learning curve would have been very steep. The aircraft was pressed into service as a low level bomber when it was designed as an interceptor and it had just the one engine, so not much redundancy in the event of a bird going down the intake. The wing area was small so landing speeds were high should the flaps not go down.

I had a trip in a Dutch 2 seater and I thought it was a rocket ship. Great fun and excellent accelaration :) And the noise the J79 made was wonderful!

[muscat329]

I had about 10 back seat trips in a 2 seater when I was a flying umpire in the early 1970's during the NATO Royal Flush competition. I was a Nav instructor on the F4 at the time and I got crewed with a German Navy Lt Cdr. He was not amused when I organised all the sorties. He couldn't fly in Knots. He flew in miles per minute, 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 miles per minute. We caused havoc around Germany. The straight line performance was fantastic, but it needed a county to do a 180 degree turn at low level. I felt very safe in it. Those were the days!

regards, muscat329

[brakedwell]

890 Meteors crashed killing 434 pilots and 10 navigators. nuff said.

[BOAC]

A couple of back-seats with the Cloggies too. A 'fun-ship' indeed, but you needed outstanding eyesight to see the 'opponent' after the first cross at high-level:)

I was told that another part of the GAF 'problem' was that the training for the Lufties was in Texas in 8/8 blue and the weather in Germany was not so kind.

I was DP in the tower at Gutersloh when a GAF 104 landed flapless with no hydraulics - and that WAS exciting:eek:

[Wholigan]

Ewan, have a look here:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=238163&highlight=Starfighter

and here:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=203620&highlight=Starfighter

[Ewan Whosearmy]

Thanks, Wholigan.

I did do a search for both F-104 and Starfighter, but obviously got something wrong as it came up with nil. :ugh:

[Wholigan]

No worries mate. I had more than a passing interest in finding them again. "Takes yer back - see! When all ya got is memories!!!"

:E ;)

[Ali Barber]

A lot of 104s were lost, but there were a lot of 104s! As was almost said earlier, if you calculated losses against the number built, I suspect the Lightning and Harrier stats would be scarier.

[parabellum]

I was based in Germany when the F104G was flying. As already mentioned, the GAF rejected Lockheed's offer of experienced crew chiefs to help them out and insisted on using their own who had little fighter jet experience. Additionally other air forces equipped with the F104 required pilots to have done tours on at least the F86 if not the F100 before getting into an F104G, not so the GAF and I believe the F104G was made into a multi-role aircraft by the GAF and was quite a bit heavier than Lockheed originally intended.
Within the Luftwaffe it was known as the Widow Maker.

[Dan Winterland]

My dad was on a Bucc Sqn who did an exchange with a Marinefleiger 104 Sqn. My dad got a back seat ride in a 104. The pliot let my dad do the take off and for the next 10 minutes, they bucked around the sky until the unimpressed German pilot took over.

"I guess zee 104 is less stable than zee Buccaneer" says the sausage muncher.

"I've no idea" says my dad. "I'm a Navigator!"

[reynoldsno1]

I remember a Marineflieger 104 doing a glide approach at Luqa many years ago - he called high key at about 10000ft!

[wessex19]

heres a pic of a NASA operated F-104 taken in the early 90's.
www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/images/f-104.jpg
Rick Stein's personal F-104G
http://www.nbbd.com/festivals/warbird/2006/StarFighter1.jpg

[Wholigan]

This is prettier! :E

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v479/Wholigan/AIRCRAFT.jpg

[Gainesy]

Another contributor to the high loss rate was that the GAF used conscripts to service the aircraft, so there was little "corporate knowledge" and Chiefy couldn't oversee everything. Pretty similar to the RAF 1950s set up, with similar accident rates?

The maintainers at Wittering in the 1970s were pretty unimpressed with the GAF F-104 vistors' habit of not wire-locking certain hard to reach components but instead spraying them with something called SilcoSet, a silicon compound squirted from a big tube, very similar to the sealant used on bath tubs.

[GANNET FAN]

I know my memory is sometimes selective and getting worse but did I remember a display at Fairford (in the 80s?) of 7 (I think Canadian) 104s going vertical with full afterburner. Staggering sight and sound.

Hell's teeth, memory fade again, hope somebody can put me right. At the same show 2 104s performing, only one in sight which made a slow pass over the runway and when about halfway down the other 104 appeared going seriously quickly, and on the same course passed underneath. Absolutely breathtaking.

Memory fade or correct?

[soddim]

Very impressive aircraft that needed skilled maintenance and handling. If operated by an air force that had neither of these attributes in sufficient numbers there was bound to be tears - and there was!

[kphx]

Not memory fade - If I recall correctly it was a German navy display pair without tip tanks - very fast, low, noisy etc but took all of Oxfordshire to turn and come back the other way! Also saw one of them go vertical through the cloud and come out again going vertically down - very very late recovery.

[Wycombe]

The German 104 duo was "The Vikings" wasn't it?

[Gainesy]

I think the Canadian lot were the Red Indians, German Navy were the Vikings and the Belgian duo were the Slivers.

[mojocvh]

"The maintainers at Wittering in the 1970s were pretty unimpressed with the GAF F-104 vistors' habit of not wire-locking certain hard to reach components but instead spraying them with something "

You obviously have never seen how the Italians wire lock battery connectors then!! :eek: