F-104 and its flap design

[GreenKnight121]

He also said that during his tour at SAGE they were a PITA to work on GCI, as they were severely range limited and had a very short range radar set. Pretty much a base defense interceptor. You had to wait their scramble until bogies were definitely targeted on their area, then "Buster!" them to altitude to make the intercept, burning up most of their fuel and requiring a PDQ RTB.

The mission profile sounds like that of the RAF's English Electric Lightning!

 

[pbehn]

The mission profile sounds like that of the RAF's English Electric Lightning!

More like the Saudi version with pylons for bombs and rocket pods from wiki Lightning F.53 Export version of the F.6 with pylons for bombs or unguided rocket pods, 44 × 2 in (50 mm), total of 46 built and one converted from F.6 (12 F.53Ks for the Kuwaiti Air Force, 34 F.53s for the Royal Saudi Arabian Air Force, one aircraft crashed before delivery).

 

[XBe02Drvr]

The mission profile sounds like that of the RAF's English Electric Lightning!

BINGO! (pun intended)

 

[msxyz]

This is a good reading about a first hand experience of doing an emergency landing in a F-104S from a retired Italian pilot. It goes very much in depth on how was to fly this airplane.

Supersonic Glider - Piloting the F-104 Starfighter In An Emergency!

BTW, the boundary system worked with the throttle 80% open. This guy had to land its plane with the engine bearings running w/o oil for 9 minutes straight and he opted not to use the BLZ (there was the risk of seizing the engine if he opened the throttle), keeping the flaps in the 'middle' position and gliding at 200-250 knots.

I know the early XF-104 with its J65 was just a proof of concept dictated by the fact that the J79 wasn't ready, but in retrospect I wonder if it couldn't have been a good design in its own right. Lightweight, the J65 at that point was tried and true (maybe they could have even swapped it for a Sapphire 7r which produced 12500lbf and had a new compressor/burning chamber compared to the J65, that was based on the Sapphire 6) and didn't have a body that outgrew its wings. The only 'fault' appears to be that Lockheed had promised to the USAF a Mach 2 design and the XF-104 could 'only' reach mach 1.8 with the 10500lbf Sapphire.

 

[PStickney]

My Systems Phase instructor at mech school (a retired USAF fighter pilot) said making an approach in a 104 to anything less than a two mile runway was "like driving your Hemi 'Cuda down a residential street and into your driveway with the two aux barrels of your four barrel carb stuck wide open. Whoa, Nellie!" If you reduced power, your BLC quit abruptly and you fell out of the sky. Not good with a downward ejection seat. If you wanted to keep the BLC working, you had a hard time getting the dang thing to go down AND slow down. He said the speed brakes and the drogue chute were both inadequate to the job. He called the plane "a bucket of gotchas". He also said that during his tour at SAGE they were a PITA to work on GCI, as they were severely range limited and had a very short range radar set. Pretty much a base defense interceptor. You had to wait their scramble until bogies were definitely targeted on their area, then "Buster!" them to altitude to make the intercept, burning up most of their fuel and requiring a PDQ RTB.

I wouldn't be surprised that a SAGE Weapons Controller would feel a bit put out handling F-104s. The -104 was never integrated into SAGE, and thus didn't have the Data Links - which meant they they had to be controlled by Good Old Battle of Britain voice radio. Every other U.S.A.F. Interceptor from that era had full integration into SAGE, and the data link - The Controllers were then able to sort the plot, select the weapon, designate the target with the light gun, and the FSQ-7 did the rest of the work.
(This wasn't a bad thing - with integrated interceptors (Manned and Bomarcs), a SAGE Center could handle several hundred intercepts simultaneously - a voice only site could handle 4-5/minute)
For short-reaction no warning locations like Southern Florida (Homestead AFB or Key West), and Gulf Coast Texas, the quick reaction (No warm up time) and high performance of the F-104A (Especially the late models with the J79-19) was the only way to deal with raids staged out of Cuba.

 

[Zipper730]

I wouldn't be surprised that a SAGE Weapons Controller would feel a bit put out handling F-104s. The -104 was never integrated into SAGE, and thus didn't have the Data Links - which meant they they had to be controlled by Good Old Battle of Britain voice radio.

Wait, I'd almost swear that the F-104 was, at some point, fitted with the datalink at some point?

I'm not sure at what point this was, but if I recall, by 1967 that was the case, and possibly as early as 1962-1963.

Every other U.S.A.F. Interceptor from that era had full integration into SAGE, and the data link - The Controllers were then able to sort the plot, select the weapon, designate the target with the light gun, and the FSQ-7 did the rest of the work.

I didn't know they would actually select the weapon to be used.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I wouldn't be surprised that a SAGE Weapons Controller would feel a bit put out handling F-104s.

Dick hated SAGE duty. He was an unapologetic Sabre Driver, and wanted to be on the stick rather than the scope. SAGE was even worse than his tour in the Globemaster, and after his second F100 tour he opted to retire as a Major rather than accept LTC and another tour in the dungeon.

For short-reaction no warning locations like Southern Florida (Homestead AFB or Key West)

When I was at Key West four years in the early 70s, there were always four F4s plugged in, systems spun up, helmets on rails, crews in the line shack, 24/7. 10-15 scrambles a week. Whenever the elint Constellation took off, the hotpad crews would go out and sit in their planes, and much of the time would get scrambled within the hour. From cockpit alert they could be rolling in 120 seconds and airborne in 180. Occasionally they came back without all the ordnance they left with.

 

[PStickney]

Wait, I'd almost swear that the F-104 was, at some point, fitted with the datalink at some point?

I'm not sure at what point this was, but if I recall, by 1967 that was the case, and possibly as early as 1962-1963.
I didn't know they would actually select the weapon to be used.

The F-104A (The Interceptors - the Cs were Air Superiority and Nuke Carriers) never got the data links - Even if they could have installed the receivers, they would not have been able to integrate it with the A model's radar (Which has a fairly basic set, a little more simple than AIRPASS, which was pretty basic itself)
In the case of SAGE, the Weapons Controller could designate weapons at the level of, say, an individual interceptor or a BOMARC, and the data link would guide the autopilots and cue the radars on the platforms. Once the interceptor or BOMARC locked on, it was on its own. The pilot or active seeker taking over the intercept. (Not necessarily hand-flying - the interceptors all had the fire control system's computers tied to the autopilots, and could fly the airplane to the release point for the selected weapons.

 

[msxyz]

I'm thinking my next kit after the 104S could be a XF-104. Some people already did them starting from F-104A/C kits https://www.cybermodeler.com/hobby/builds/hawk/build_hawk_0504.shtml It looks better proportioned than the final F-104, which had to be stretched to accommodate the longer (but not much bigger) J79. Wings still look pretty wimpy on the comparatively large fuselage. I've read somewhere that Tony Levier, chief test pilot at Lockheed, when he saw the plane for the first time, he joked: "where are the wings"? In the link in my post above, the one about an emergency landing in the F-104, the pilot recalls that he kept the wingtip tanks because they were providing useful lift, despite increasing the drag.

I also found a service manual for the J65-W-18, the naval version (used in the Grumman F11) of the J65 with afterburner, also employed by the XF-104. I digress a bit now, but the Sapphire/J65 is an underappreciated engine. A shame Wright didn't invest more resources in its development: it could have been a competitor of the J52. Its compressor design was very efficient and much less prone to stalls even without variable geometry inlets or stators. Rolls Royce used the same compressor design for the Mk200-300 series of their Avon, still sold today under the Siemens brand. The afterburner version of the J65, for a time, was also the primary choice for the McDonnell Phantom project (called the F3H-G); it was initially preferred over the more powerful J79 because already available, because it was already in use in the Navy and last because unproved engine designs already doomed the otherwise promising F3H Demon so they were afraid to repeat that fiasco.

 

[MIflyer]

I think the old Lindberg kit is almost an XF-104. It probably started out that way, like most of their old jet kits, which were of prototypes.