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Created as a day fighter by Lockheed as one of the " Century Series " of fighter aircraft for the United States Air Force (USAF), it was developed into an all-weather multirole aircraft in the early 1960s and produced by several other nations, seeing widespread service outside the United States.
Designed by Lockheed’s ace engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson to surpass the MiG-15 fighters that had stunned the aeronautical world in Korea, the F-104 Starfighter was something completely different: an inexpensive lightweight fighter with thin seven-foot wings, sharp as the blade of a dagger.
Mar 1, 2024 · The story of the F-104 begins in the skies over Korea, where U.S. pilots in F-86 Sabres battled MiG-15s, many of them secretly flown by Russian pilots. While the F-86 held its own, pilots...
Sep 14, 2022 · The aircraft became the first operational fighter platform capable of sustained flight at speeds past Mach 2 - twice the speed of sound. It eventually went on to become the first aircraft to simultaneously hold the world speed and altitude records in its F-104A and F-104C forms.
- The F-104 Starfighter’s Design
- Testing The F-104 Starfighter
- American Usage
- German Safety Issues
- Use by NASA and in Other Space-Related Endeavors
The F-104 Starfighter went into development in 1951, after designer Kelly Johnson interviewed a number of Korean Warpilots. Taking their opinions to heart, Johnson felt it was important to develop a fighter plane that was lightweight, simple and very fast. This was a departure from the then-current trend of bulkier planes that could carry heavy pay...
As the J79 was not yet ready, early prototypes of the F-104 Starfighter were built with the Wright J65 engine, a version of the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire. The aircraft had its first flight in 1954. Problems were immediately detected and most were resolved. While the first two prototypes were destroyed in crashes, the tests went well enough that 1...
Not long after the testing phase, the F-104 Starfighter was pressed into service during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. Pilots weren’t thrilled with the results, as they preferred jets that could carry bigger payloads and had longer ranges. Still, the Starfighter was again used during the 1961 Berlin Crisis. While the F-104 did not engage with any...
West Germany was one of the countries bribed into buying F-104 Starfighters from Lockheed, purchasing 916 of the aircraft in the late 1960s. It went very badly for them. Over time, 292 of them crashed, resulting in the deaths of 115 pilots. The problem became so severe that German pilots began to refer to the F-104 as “The Widow Maker.” In 1975, Lo...
NASAused F-104 Starfighters from 1956 until 1994, performing high-speed and altitude flight research at Dryden Flight Research Center in California. They were also used for many safety chase missions and served as a launch platform for sounding rockets. Over the course of its use by NASA, the aircraft flew more than 18,000 flights. In 2011, Starfig...
Feb 28, 2014 · First acquired in August 1956, F-104 Starfighter aircraft were the most versatile work-horses in what was then NASA Dryden’s stable of research and support aircraft, with 11 of them flying mostly research missions over the next 38 years.
Oct 3, 2019 · The F-104 Starfighter traces its origins to the Korean War where US Air Force pilots were battling the MiG-15. Flying the North American F-86 Sabre, they stated that they desired a new aircraft with superior performance.
