Belgian Air Force Lockheed F-104G Starfighter

The fourth iteration of the 1950s era “Century Series,” the F-104 Starfighter was designed around one central element: speed. Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, head of Lockheed’s famous “Skunk Works” factory, had interviewed U.S. Air Force pilots during the Korean War, seeking their input on any new fighter. Since many pilots reported that they wanted high performance more than anything else, Johnson returned to the United States determined to deliver exactly that: a simple, point-defense interceptor marrying the lightest airframe to the most powerful engine available at the time, the superb General Electric J-79.

 

When Johnson offered the L-098 design to the USAF in 1952, they were so impressed that they created an entire competition for the aircraft to be accepted, ostensibly replacing the F-100 Super Sabre. The Lockheed design had the clear edge, though North American and Northrop’s designs went on to be built themselves—the North American F-107A Ultra Sabre and the Northrop T-38 Talon. The USAF purchased the L-098 as the F-104A Starfighter. The design changed very little from its initial design to prototype to operational aircraft, and it was finished in an astonishing two years.

 

When the first F-104As reached the USAF in 1958, pilots quickly found it was a hot fighter—perhaps a little too hot. The Starfighter’s design philosophy of speed above all else resulted in an aircraft with an extended fuselage, a T-tail for stability, and tiny wings, which were so thin that special guards had to be put on the leading edges to avoid injuring ground personnel. Because of its small wing, the F-104 required a lot of runway, and blown flaps (which vent airflow from the engine over the flaps to increase lift) were a necessity; unfortunately, the airflow system often failed, which meant that the F-104 pilot would be coming in at a dangerous rate of speed. Because it was feared that a pilot who ejected from a F-104 would never clear the tail, a downward-ejection seat was fitted, but after killing over 20 pilots, the seat was retrofitted with a more reliable, upward-firing type. The design also was not very maneuverable in the horizontal, though it was challenging to match in the vertical. Its shape earned it the moniker “Missile With a Man In It” and “Zipper.”

 

One thing pilots did not complain about was its speed—the listed top speed of the F-104 was Mach 2.2 (2,714 kph/1,687 mph), but this was because, above that, the fuselage would quite literally melt. The J-79 was a near-flawless engine that gave the Starfighter an excellent thrust-to-weight ratio; uniquely, the intake design of the Starfighter gave the engine a banshee-like wail for which the aircraft became known for. So superb was the F-104 at level speed and climbing that NASA leased several as trainers for the X-15 program and set several speed and time-to-climb records.

 

If the F-104 had received a mixed reception at best in the USAF, Lockheed felt that it had potential as an export aircraft. Beating out several excellent British and other American designs in a 1961 competition, every NATO nation except France and Great Britain bought F-104s and manufactured their own as the F-104G; Japan also license-built Starfighters as F-104Js, while more were supplied to Pakistan and Taiwan. As in USAF service, the accident rates were incredibly high, particularly in West German and Canadian service—West Germany lost 30% of its initial batch, and the Canadians over half. Worries that the F-104 was too “hot” for pilots usually transitioning from the F-86 were ignored, and later, it was learned why: German, Dutch, and Japanese politicians later confessed to being bribed by Lockheed into buying the Starfighters.

 

The high accident rates earned the aircraft nicknames such as “Widowmaker,” “Flying Coffin,” “Lawn Dart,” “Death Tube,” and “Ground Nail.” Pakistani pilots simply called it Badmash (“Criminal”) and the Japanese Eiko (“Glory,” inferring that it was the easiest way to reach it.) West German pilots often joked that the quickest way to obtain an F-104 was to simply buy a patch of land and wait.

 

Nevertheless, once pilots learned how to tame the beast, the accident rates eased somewhat, and NATO pilots discovered that the Starfighter excelled as a low-level attack aircraft: fitted with bomb racks, the F-104 was remarkably stable at low altitude and high speed, and Luftwaffe pilots, in particular, found that they could sneak up on a target, launch a simulated attack, and be gone before ground defenses could even react. The Italians, in particular, loved the F-104, building their own version as the F-104S: these aircraft were equipped with multi-mode radar and armed with AIM-7 Sparrows and Aspide radar-guided missiles, making them superb interceptors. Even though most NATO nations reequipped their F-104 units with newer F-16s, F-18s, or Tornadoes beginning in the 1980s, the Italian F-104S fleet was continuously upgraded and soldiered on until final retirement in 2004. There were a total of 2,578 F-104s built, primarily F-104Gs. Today, over 150 survive in museums, with at least ten flyable examples, making it one of the best-preserved members of the Century Series.

 

This aircraft, FX82, was license-built in Belgium by Sociétés Anonyme Belge de Constructions Aéronautiques (SABCA) for the Belgian Air Force in 1965 and served with 350 Squadron at Beauvechain until 1983, when it was retired in favor of the newer F-16s. It was brought to the U.S. in 1989, and Planes of Fame acquired the aircraft in 1993 and has remained there ever since. This was quite a surprise since foreign aircraft are uncommon in American collections! The BAF camouflage is somewhat faded but still shows the colors used by Belgian F-104s, similar to the USAF’s Southeast Asia camouflage.

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