Thread replies: 38
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Thread images: 17
Was she as bad as everyone says she was?
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>>32230911
who cares? LOOK AT IT
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depends how you use it
use it as point defense interceptor it works fine
use it for ground attack like the germans did and its wings will fall off
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>>32230911
>the LITERAL Ace of Aces thought it was a flaming metal death trap
It was shit
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>>32230967
The Germans did poorly with it because they had shit pilots who were completely inexperienced with aircraft of that type. Nobody else who used it had as many crashes as they did.
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>>32231162
They also tried to make it go low and slow for ground attack.
Does anything about that design say "slow"?
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>>32230946
a plane like that can't be bad if it's literally named "Starfighter".
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>>32231162
The Belgian Air Force had pretty good pilots at the time and that had not prevented them to lose 38 F-104G.
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On paper? No, there was nothing wrong with it. It was effectively an American analog to the MiG-21, and although it was a tricky plane to fly, it was hardly the deathtrap that the Germans made it out to be.
Operationally? It was a shit plane. Though it was a good analog to the MiG-21, NATO didn't need a MiG-21. NATO needed strike aircraft and longer-ranged air superiority fighters, and the F-104 didn't really meet those needs. SAC didn't want it because the F-106 could cover more ground and carry the Genie, TAC didn't want it because its endurance was shit and they had better strike fighters, and most other operators found that it didn't quite suit their needs.
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>>32230911
What is it with the American obsession with wingtip fuel pods?
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>>32230911
It was only adopted in NATO because Lockheed bribed german officials and other countries copied Germany.
Lockheed knew they had a bad plane from the start so had to rig the german competition.
The preferred fighter and competition favorite that was not chosen because of the bribes would have been the Jet/Rocket hybrid interceptor SR 177. The Smaller prototype SR 53 is pictured here.
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>>32231320
>On paper? No, there was nothing wrong with it.
Stopped reading.
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>>32231795
>other countries copied Germany.
West Germany did not have that kind of influence over NATO, even in a sort of "influence" role that you imply
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>>32231800
You want to put forth a counter argument or just continue to shitpost?
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>>32231795
>SR 177.
>Hydrogen peroxide
Have mercy.
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>>32232074
it would have been pretty good for woosh gotta go fast point defence interception of bombers like the Lightning or MiG-21 especially against shorter ranger spicer russian bombers like the Badger
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>>32231711
Reduces drag by reducing wingtip vortexes or something like that.
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>>32231800
What? It was good for the role it was originally designed for, it's just that nobody needed it for that.
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>>32231828
Wrong.
Germany needed to completely re-arm its airforce, the german requirement was huge and similar to that of the rest of NATO.
Other nations followed Germany's decision and went with the F104, partly because a winner had already been chosen and party due to economy of scale.
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>>32232404
No one needed interceptors during the height of the Cold War?
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>>32232254
>Hydrogen peroxide would have been pretty good for woosh SPONTANEOUS EXPLOSION
Fixed. And people think F-104 had bad realiablty
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>>32231300
>The Belgian Air Force had pretty good pilots at the time and that had not prevented them to lose 38 F-104G.
Reposting something I wrote a good while ago:
Captain Guy Ghys was a skilled pilot in the Belgian airforce. He had flown a variety of prop (SV4B Trainer & AT6 Harvard) & jet planes (T-33A Trainer, F-89F Thunderstreak & F-104 Starfighter) and had an ungodly amount of flight hours, in and out of combat.
On the 24th of Sept 1969, he taxi'ed his F-104 (tail number FX-71) on the runway and started his take off. Halfway the runway he noticed that the engine started to crap out, resulting in insufficient engine thrust and following procedures by the book, he abandons the take-off. Procedures or not, his luck was about to run out.
The craft's single engine spools down, and one after the other, the emergency brake systems fail. Bricks are shat when the aircraft continues straight ahead off the runway into the overrun. It rumbles on to cross a road behind the overrun and tumbles and catches fire.
The good captain, following procedures ejects in the overrun, just before the aircraft was about to cross the road. But planes in this era did not have enough trust in their ejection seats to develop enough lift to allow the parachute to fully deploy. With little forward momentum and not enough altitude, the parachute had no time to open.
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Let's buy one and find out.
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>>32232934
>cont.
As the control tower scrambles the base's fire brigade, the pilot races to the ground only slowed by a barely deployed parachute. He lands in a swampy area just next to the overrun. The impact is severe, and crushes a few bones. The weight of the ejection seat (which he could obviously not separate from in the air) presses down on him, as he rolls face down into the swamp. Slowly, mud and water seep into his mask... Unable to push away, and with the heavy weight pressing down on him, he can do nothing but gasp for air (getting mud in return). By the time the rescue teams reach him, half his lungs have been destroyed by mud. They saved him, though his life hanged by a thread.
He spent the rest of his life at home. Unable to take more than a few steps before gasping for air. He had to drag a little trolley with him, with dual oxygen bottles to feed him O2.
He could say no more than a handful of words before having to breath from his oxygen mask, making it impossible to finish a sentence.
He was a great man though. He died about a decade ago. He will be missed.
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>>32232956
Does it say how long the aircraft has been in Belgian service?
Brake failure sounds like a maintenance mistake.
Brakes are usually high maintenance items on aircraft, especially the f104, constant removal and replacement. It's easy to slip up and not tighten something, which might come loose and leak all the hydraulic fluid out, causing brake failure on both mains.
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>>32232355
This. Same reason you see those funny little wingtips on the end of wings on commercial aircraft
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>>32233061
one crashed a good 5 minutes away from my grand parents.
My dad swears it was the loudest bang he ever heard. He did his conscription helping out the bombsquad clean up the Iron harvest for a good 3 years.
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>>32231711
As others have already pointed out, it was to reduce drag on the aircraft. You only see fuel pods on designs from the 50s-60s. They started to figure out that having heavy ass fuel pods on the ends of the wings wasn't such a great idea for wing loading during flight ops. The wing tip pylon for AA missiles came along as a kind of evolution of the concept. You still get the reduction in drag by mounting the cylindrical AA missiles on the edges of the wings and reduce the load on the wings during maneuvers due to the missiles having a much smaller mass than probably even the empty tanks. That's one of the reasons that wing tip pylons are still a thing for 4-4.5gen fighters.
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>>32233061
>Does it say how long the aircraft has been in Belgian service?
Parked in 1981, out of inventory in 1983.
>Brake failure sounds like a maintenance mistake.
Euhm, if a plane goes full throttle for liftoff, it's not realistic to expect the brakes to be able to take the beating of being put on.
There was no reverse thrust since the engine was out.
It's not a maintenance issue that the brakes failed. It was entirely expected. They just overheated to uselessness when applied at that speed.
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>>32232770
The F104's rocket hybrid brother NF-104A had three test airframes and all were destroyed in accidents.
The Two SR 53 prototypes flew just over 100 missions with no serious failures.
There's a reason that SR177 was the preferred candidate, and there's a reason everyone in the defence industry was shocked that F104 won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals
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>>32231711
>>32232355
>>32233103
>>32233274
And now days, since missile wings out there are non-stealthy, they're putting AEW / ECM / ECCM / Electronic Warfare pods (or integrated into the wing) on the wing tips.
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>>32232658
People needed interceptors, but they wanted long-range interceptors, not the point-defense interceptor that the F-104 was. Really, the MiG-21 probably would have had the same reputation as the F-104 had it been a NATO instead of Soviet plane.
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>>32233808
>but they wanted long-range interceptors, not the point-defense interceptor that the F-104 was.
F-104 had enormous supersonic range. Officially F-22 has smaller range...
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>>32230911
It wa sonly wth inferior race German pilots. Superior race Spanish pilots wrecked exactly ZERO of them.
[spoiler]Now serious, the REAL reason SAF had zero Starfighter accidents was that Spanish pilots were threatened to literally deduct the cost of the plane from their future salary if they wrecked the plane. Fucking Spaniards.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]I know spoilers don't witk in /k/[/spoiler]
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>>32234573
>It wa sonly wth
*It was only with
faulty keyboard battery, gomen.
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>>32234601
>keyboard battery
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>>32233854
>F-104 had enormous supersonic range
surely you have a source for such a claim
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mirageIIIs or J35s would have been the better choise for most of the european starfighter buyers. both were capable interceptors but also proved to be able to do groundstrikes as well
Thread posts: 38
Thread images: 17
Thread images: 17