Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter is a single-engine supersonic fighter designed by Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works team for Lockheed and first flown on 4 March 1954. It was the first U.S. jet fighter in service to sustain Mach 2, a narrow fuselage wrapped tightly around a General Electric J79, with a wing of only 21 feet 11 inches span. The U.S. Air Force introduced it in 1958 but bought only 296 of the 2,578 built; well over half were licence-built in Canada, Europe and Japan, and fifteen NATO and allied air forces flew the type. Starfighters flew 5,206 sorties in Vietnam, set world speed, altitude and time-to-climb records in their early years, and in German service lost 292 of 916 aircraft, earning the name Witwenmacher, 'widowmaker'; the type's export sales were later tainted by the Lockheed bribery scandal. Italy, the last military operator, retired the F-104S in 2004, NASA flew research Starfighters until 1994, and a few remain in civilian operation today.
Why It Mattered
The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was the first American jet fighter in service able to fly at Mach 2, twice the speed of sound. Lockheed began the design in November 1952, answering the threat posed by the fast, agile Soviet-built MiGs of the Korean War. Where other fighters were growing larger, the F-104 wrapped a narrow fuselage tightly around one big engine and carried a wing spanning only 21 feet 11 inches. In May 1958, weeks after the first deliveries, its squadron pilots set a world speed record of 1,404.19 mph and a world altitude record of 91,249 feet, and the type also established seven climb-to-height records. Built for the U.S. Air Force, most were instead flown by other countries — Canada, Italy, Germany and Japan above all — and many were licence-built overseas.
Design Notes
Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works team designed the F-104 as a lightweight, high-speed fighter, a formula unlike anything then flying. The wing made the shape: a span of just 21 feet 11 inches, leading edges so sharp they needed fitted covers to protect ground crews, and a downward cant of 10 degrees. The General Electric J79 and its afterburner took up more than half the fuselage's length, and the fuel tanks and cockpit took most of the rest, so the electronics were made as self-contained plug-in packages. Armament was a 20-mm M-61 Vulcan gun in the fuselage and a Sidewinder missile on each wingtip. Early aircraft ejected the pilot downward, a seat that gave little chance of escape at low altitude; it was replaced by an upward-firing seat. Two-seat versions, the F-104B and the F-104D, served as operational trainers.
Operational History
The first F-104A deliveries took place on 26 January 1958, to the 83d Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Hamilton Air Force Base, California. The Air Force was never entirely sold on the lightweight idea, and it bought fewer than 300 Starfighters for itself — 296 in all. Some were deployed to Florida during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In Vietnam the F-104C was moved into a fighter-bomber role that the Museum of Flight calls an awkward fit, and Starfighters flew 5,206 sorties there, losing 14 aircraft. Walter J. Boyne, writing in Air Force Magazine, judges that the F-104 was never a significant factor in combat. Its long career was overseas, where fifteen NATO and allied air forces flew it, many of them for longer than the USAF had. West Germany chose the F-104 as its primary fighter in October 1958, and Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Japan and Italy followed. Production reached 2,578 aircraft in all, well over half of them licence-built in Canada, Europe and Japan by Canadair, Fiat, Fokker, MBB, Mitsubishi and SABCA alongside Lockheed. In German service the losses mounted: 292 of the 916 German Starfighters crashed, killing 115 pilots, and the German public dubbed the aircraft Witwenmacher, "widowmaker". Revelations in 1975 showed that Lockheed had paid bribes to foreign military and political figures to win purchase contracts. The Senate subcommittee led by Frank Church concluded the payments had gone to members of friendly governments to guarantee contracts; the 1976 figure was $22 million in bribes, the F-104 sales — the "Deal of the Century" — among them. The U.S. Air Force phased the Starfighter out of front-line service by 1969, although Air National Guard units kept it until 1975.
Afterlife
Italy flew the Starfighter longest: the final production version, the Aeritalia-built F-104S, stayed in Italian service until its retirement in 2004. NASA gave the type a long second career: from August 1956 it flew Starfighters at Dryden in a wide variety of missions, 11 aircraft over 38 years, the last flight in February 1994. NASA Starfighters gave research pilots experience with reaction control systems ahead of the X-15 programme, one aircraft fitted with a hydrogen peroxide thruster system for the purpose. Vintage Aviation News writes that, in that research role, the F-104 helped bridge the gap between aircraft and spacecraft. The first of them, NASA 818, was flown by nineteen pilots, Neil Armstrong among them, and was transferred to the National Air and Space Museum after its last flight on 18 November 1975. Other Starfighters sit in museums — Seattle's Museum of Flight displays an F-104C that arrived in 1992 — and a few still fly, several remaining in civilian operation with Florida-based Starfighters Space.