F-104 Starfighter.....

[Matt308]

I think you are reading more into that pic than is there, CB.

 

[syscom3]

Why did the wingtip tanks for the -104 have fins on the back? I've always wondered that.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Why did the wingtip tanks for the -104 have fins on the back? I've always wondered that.

To limit pitch movement of the tank during certain maneuvers. If the tank was allowed to pitch, it would twist the wing.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I think you are reading more into that pic than is there, CB.

I agree.

How are you going to know what he was thinking anyhow?

 

[futuredogfight]

I prefer the Phabulous Phantom.

 

[Matt308]

To limit pitch movement of the tank during certain maneuvers. If the tank was allowed to pitch, it would twist the wing.

Wasn't it also to minimize induced drag from the wing tank vortex?

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Wasn't it also to minimize induced drag from the wing tank vortex?

Yupp! But tip tanks liked to dance around the wingtip depending on maneuvers. I was in a T-33 pulling some Gs, I thought the tip tanks were going to go into orbit!

 

[Matt308]

Yikes.

 

[razor1uk]

Yupp! But tip tanks liked to dance around the wingtip depending on maneuvers. I was in a T-33 pulling some Gs, I thought the tip tanks were going to go into orbit!

So long as they didn't waggle around as much as an old 747 tips do on take-off... sometimes, memories of being in a jumbo leave me wondering was it the engines pushing it, or was it trying to flap (glad I didn't typo there..) like a bird.

I think Wings (or then) Great Planes did a Starfigther documentary - inc' many aerial shots, info and rocket scaled test videos - one of the vid clips in it, is a Rocketry Test with wing (structural aerodynamical model) + tip tank model test shows how twisty and vibey they could be. Some of that ensuing data R&D is what methinks led to the 33's wasited tip tanks and to the tails of 104 tanks.

Naturally I know the rocket test ahcieved a far higher 'scale' of acceleration than real size, and that they were mainly concerning then aero thermal structural theories and ideas before development towards real application. Mind due, CJ staff Lockheed/Skunkworks (did it stink there or did they smoke) did IIRC from spec issue to 1st flight do it in close to a year, when most previous jet RD&F timelines took of that era, triple that.

 

[Mancarti]

Glen Reaves DID not die selling bibles. 2006vette I'm sure lived behind the Reaves family because he got the daughters names right, but Reaves divorced his wife Sugardoll back in the 70's and went to Europe to fly choppers for Lockheed. Glen gave me about 20 of those nice aircraft company models as well as a nice big F 104 for my bedroom. My uncle Stan Mancarti flew with Reaves before he was killed in a F 84 accident. Reaves remained a life long friend of the family and we lost touch in the 80's.

 

[CharlesBronson]

I agree.

How are you going to know what he was thinking anyhow?

Face is the reflection of the soul (old say), beside it was not just him, everyone in the Luftwaffe wich experience in WW2 share his toughts, even the new free press of 1960s was quite corrosive after the big number of accidents. You understand german so you can check this one:

Wochenschau-Archiv

 

[ShVAK]

Was never a big fan of the F-104's looks, just a big lawn dart to my eyes (looked cool in some flashier liveries though).

Or its *ahem* accident rate. It may not have been the widowmaker the American and German press made it out to be but it was an extremely demanding bastard of a jet to fly and while it performed well for its time the E.E. Lightning and Su-15 Flagon were just as impressive if not more so, and didn't have such a bad reputation (info on the Su-15 has always been pretty limited though). They also had better agility, the -104's turning radius with that tiny stub of a wing was atrocious even for an interceptor.

I think the F-106 is the best looking of the Century series. Very clean thoroughbred lines, no external ordnance to clutter the almost perfect delta, just a gorgeous aircraft. Probably the best-looking fighter in US service until the F-15 came along.

 

[Matt308]

Supposedly had fairly advanced avionics to boot. But that damn splitter plate, no gun during an admittedly poor missile capability period and ability to attain high supersonic speeds needing literally minutes for Vmax. Pretty yes. But...

I didn't think about the Flagon... interesting.

 

[ShVAK]

Supposedly had fairly advanced avionics to boot. But that damn splitter plate, no gun during an admittedly poor missile capability period and ability to attain high supersonic speeds needing literally minutes for Vmax. Pretty yes. But...

They did address the lack of gun by installing an M61 in the internal bay with the Six Shooter program. Which was sorely needed because AIM-4 was just about the most useless missile ever. If it was available with Sparrows or Sidewinders, even early models, it would've been a lot more capable.

The F-106 was the prettiest but my favorite in actual combat out of the Century fighters would be the -105. I love the Thud, it was a badass bird, served admirably and with heavy losses in the heart of Vietnam. Even managed to blast 27 MiG-17's out of the sky mostly using cannon, in an era when guns were (very wrongly) thought to be outliving their usefulness...

 

[CharlesBronson]

German politicians flying the F-104G to probe if is dangerous or not (damn sure it was), with english subtitles created by me, newsreel february 1966

 

[Crimea_River]

Good job on that. The danger was more in the mission profile than in the qualities of the plane. Designed as a high speed interceptor, it was thrust into a low level tactical role in NATO for which it was not ideal. The term "widowmaker" was coined by the media, not the pilots.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

We have beat this to death.

"A USAF comparison study of the accident rate of all the Century Series, F-4 Phantom, A-7, and F-111 aircraft over 750,000 flying hours showed that the F-100 Super Sabre led the table with an accident rate over double that of the F-104 (471 accidents for the F-100 versus 196 for the F-104) which had the second highest rate, closely followed by the F-102 Delta Dagger. It should be noted that the F-104 figures in this study were taken over 600,000 hours as the type had not reached 750,000 hours at the time."

Vietnam Conflict Aviation Resource Center - A Warbirds Resource Group Site

From Wiki

"The safety record of the F-104 Starfighter became high-profile news, especially in Germany, in the mid-1960s. In West Germany it came to be nicknamed Witwenmacher ("The Widowmaker"). Some operators lost a large proportion of their aircraft through accidents, although the accident rate varied widely depending on the user and operating conditions; the German Air Force lost about 30% of aircraft in accidents over its operating career,and Canada lost 46% of its F-104s (110 of 235). The Spanish Air Force, however, lost none.

 

[CharlesBronson]

"The safety record of the F-104 Starfighter became high-profile news, especially in Germany, in the mid-1960s. In West Germany it came to be nicknamed Witwenmacher ("The Widowmaker"). Some operators lost a large proportion of their aircraft through accidents, although the accident rate varied widely depending on the user and operating conditions; the German Air Force lost about 30% of aircraft in accidents over its operating career,and Canada lost 46% of its F-104s (110 of 235). The Spanish Air Force, however, lost none."

Made high profile news and with good reason, imagine today losing 6 F-35 Raptor pilots in 3 months....Would that made news or not ? surely do. Germany had that kind of losess, sometime more and canada also had his share of tragedy.

The spanish Ejercito Del Aire probably had the advantage of the clear mediterranean skies, and they never overload their planes with inertial navigation, bombs rail, infrared gunsight and so, all the gadgets preset in the 104 "G".

 

[FLYBOYJ]

The spanish Ejercito Del Aire probably had the advantage of the clear mediterranean skies, and they never overload their planes with inertial navigation, bombs rail, infrared gunsight and so, all the gadgets preset in the 104 "G".

And wasn't the fault of the aircraft - the operator(s) changed the role of this high altitude interceptor into a low level nuclear bomber. Despite that, the numbers speak for itself. The Ejercito Del Aire operated the aircraft in the role it was designed for.

 

[Zipper730]

How do you distinguish a 104 crew chief from all others? He's the one with scars on his forehead. Truth or urban legend, the wing leading edges of the 104 were near knife-edged.

They were sharp, but they weren't like a scalpel. They probably were like a butter knife, or somewhere between the butter knife and steak-knife.

It didn't have any range.

That's not actually true. In fact, I'm not sure where that came from, though I suppose in some context it probably is: If I was to compare the low altitude performance supersonic with the high altitude subsonic performance of another plane, sure it'd likely come up quite short.

Those who have flown the plane, and those who have studied its performance have shown that it's range was no worse than any other Century series fighter. It had a good fuel-fraction (30% or so), and while it's L/D wasn't very high, it seemed similar to the F-4 at cruise (F-4E at least). At low-altitudes, it actually could fly at least as far as the F-4 could, and fly fast enough to stay with the F-105's.

I remember there was a proposal to graft a conformal store underneath the aircraft able to carry an MB-1 or AIR-2 Genie: To minimize drag, a boat-tail was added to the back of the weapon. The aircraft in this configuration was expected to meet a requirement for a supersonic intercept radius (outbound supersonic, decelerate to subsonic and either loiter for 10-15 minutes; then turn back subsonic)
of 650 nm, which it achieved.

I'm not exactly sure how far it could fly with it's normal wing-tip sidewinders & 195-gallon drop-tanks, though I have heard a comparison likening it to the F-4.

There seemed to be a real animosity in the USAF for the aircraft, and I'm not sure how much of it was due to the various handling problems the aircraft possessed, or due to the fact that they didn't want a cheap aircraft that could be quickly produced.

1. For a small nation: A small air-force is great; for a large-nation (except in time of war) it's a catastrophe! Budgets are allocated based on the previous year's budget, and a reduction in necessary budget would mean the budgets would be expected to conform to this if not even get lower (I'm generally opposed to this kind of budgetary practice as it just encourages ever increasing defense spending). Even if the Air Force was able to procure more fighters to compensate, and let's say 350 light-weight fighters could do what 250 normal-weight fighters could do, Congress might only allocate them 300.
   
2. The New Look: The Truman administration realized we'd be hard pressed to match the size of the (former) Soviet Union's military in numbers of troops and equipment. As a result, the decision was made to use long-ranged bombers with nuclear-ordinance so as to reduce the numbers we'd need to destroy them (exact policy varied from carrying out a series of city-busting raids, to just hurling the whole enchilada at the USSR in one fell swoop). By the late 1940's, nuclear bombs started to get small enough that aircraft that previously couldn't carry them could including fighters and attack planes (as well as the B-45 which was volume restricted), and in the 1950's practical aerial refueling systems were developed allowing aircraft ranging from heavy bombers to fighters to be refueled: The end result of all this, was a primary strategy of using nuclear war for deterrence, with conventional warfare for "brush-fires". This policy might very well have favored a more technologically advanced Air-Force of smaller size.

The Air Force basically had little interest in a fighter-plane unless it could carry nuclear-bombs, could carry-out all-weather interceptions of enemy bombers, or could escort a bomber (and that interest faded), and while the F-104C would meet the nuclear-strike demands; there are many ways to make a case against a design you don't like.

In politics: The argument is more important than the facts.