F-104 Starfighter
- Episode aired Feb 19, 2009
IMDb RATING
6.0/10
5
YOUR RATING
Photos
Paul Moga
- Self - Host
- (as Paul 'Max' Moga)
Storyline
Featured review
Controversial.
Lockheed's F-104 Starfighter first appeared in the mid-50s. Its appearance is beguiling. It looks like an unusually long, shiny silver bullet to which someone has attached two small stubby wings and a delicate empennage. It looks fast -- and it was.
It was intended to be a replacement for the fleet of aging F-86s and F-84s and in fact it was an improvement in many respects over the older airplanes, especially in speed. It was a relatively unsophisticated lightweight airplane and the USAF wasn't very enthusiastic about it. It had little range, its stubby wings couldn't carry any ordinance, and it lacked the radar that would have made it operable in poor weather.
But NATO too was looking for a standard interceptor for Europe, an environment for which the Starfighter wasn't well suited. The F-104's chief competition was Saunders-Roe's rocket-powered SR-177. The narration has it that the F-104 was chosen because of "political considerations."
One of the post-Watergate investigations uncovered the fact that those political considerations included Lockheed's offering bribes totaling more than twenty million dollars to politicians in Germany and Japan. The F-104 won the competition and Germany alone bought or made more than 600 of the aircraft, a windfall profit for Lockheed. As one expert puts it, "The F-104 ended up as the standard NATO fighter for reasons other than its capabilities."
It was a disaster for Germany in more ways than one. Two hundred and seventy F-104s were lost in crashes, and one hundred and ten pilots killed. Germany's losses due to accidents amounted to 30%. The Canadian loss rate was 46%. (The German pilots called it der Witwenmacher.) In the USAF, the write-off accident rate was the highest of any of the "Century Series" fighters. The narration here opines that the losses were the result of improper training and couldn't be blamed on the airplane.
I wouldn't have been so easy on Lockheed or on its F-104, and neither have many other commenters. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act that criminalized such underhandedness. But the airplane looked just great.
It was intended to be a replacement for the fleet of aging F-86s and F-84s and in fact it was an improvement in many respects over the older airplanes, especially in speed. It was a relatively unsophisticated lightweight airplane and the USAF wasn't very enthusiastic about it. It had little range, its stubby wings couldn't carry any ordinance, and it lacked the radar that would have made it operable in poor weather.
But NATO too was looking for a standard interceptor for Europe, an environment for which the Starfighter wasn't well suited. The F-104's chief competition was Saunders-Roe's rocket-powered SR-177. The narration has it that the F-104 was chosen because of "political considerations."
One of the post-Watergate investigations uncovered the fact that those political considerations included Lockheed's offering bribes totaling more than twenty million dollars to politicians in Germany and Japan. The F-104 won the competition and Germany alone bought or made more than 600 of the aircraft, a windfall profit for Lockheed. As one expert puts it, "The F-104 ended up as the standard NATO fighter for reasons other than its capabilities."
It was a disaster for Germany in more ways than one. Two hundred and seventy F-104s were lost in crashes, and one hundred and ten pilots killed. Germany's losses due to accidents amounted to 30%. The Canadian loss rate was 46%. (The German pilots called it der Witwenmacher.) In the USAF, the write-off accident rate was the highest of any of the "Century Series" fighters. The narration here opines that the losses were the result of improper training and couldn't be blamed on the airplane.
I wouldn't have been so easy on Lockheed or on its F-104, and neither have many other commenters. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act that criminalized such underhandedness. But the airplane looked just great.
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- rmax304823
- Nov 29, 2015
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