Talk:Lockheed F-104 Starfighter/Archive 2

German Ace - dubious source
This pilot was a prop fighter ace, and this does not qualify him to make statements on JET fighters, any more than a biplane expert would be qualified to rate the capabilities of a P51. This inclusion lacks relevance to the subject matter. Zotel - the Stub Maker (talk) 15:25, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Please acquaint yourself with Eric Hartmann's postwar career. When he returned to West Germany, Hartmann reentered military service in the Bundeswehr and became an officer in the West German Air Force (Bundesluftwaffe), where he commanded West Germany's first all-jet unit, Jagdgeschwader 71 "Richthofen", which was equipped initially with Canadair Sabres and later with Lockheed F-104 Starfighters. FWiW Bzuk (talk).
 * Please also consider he was never an "ace" in a jet aircraft, he was trained some on them (I see nothing that indicates he even regularly flew jets, although that is possible, however as his article "Erich is a good pilot but not a good officer" and his critique was that the craft was "a fundamentally flawed and unsafe aircraft" with flies in the face of "the Spanish Air Force, for example, lost none." and the additional "Many pilots and ground crew had settled into civilian jobs after World War II and had not kept pace with developments". Zotel - the Stub Maker (talk) 16:36, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Tag removal before discussion is inappropriate. Zotel - the Stub Maker (talk) 16:36, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hartmann was not only familiar with the F-86 and F-104 but was also kept current in all the latest equipment and technology as he was often quoted about his reaction to the latest fighters. He echoed from the pilot's viewpoint, the widely held belief that the Starfighter was not suitable for the roles it played in the Luftwaffe. His evaluation was not at odds with other scathing reports, notably by Roland Beamont, earlier in 1958. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 16:51, 25 July 2009 (UTC).
 * I reworded the Hartman bit as it was daft to say propeller aircraft ace, hopefully it should read better. The mention of fighter ace is just to confirm his experience as a pilot nothing to do with the type of aircraft he flew. MilborneOne (talk) 19:52, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * West German Air Force was losing one F-104 per week on average in the 1970s. The whole WARPAC was laughing its head off and this fact got widely published in all soviet satellite state newspapers and media. The F-104 was by far the worst US fighter no doubting that. On the other hand MiG-21 accident rates were quite similar and the late MiG-21bis variant had almost the same number of switches and dials in the cockpit (circa 350), so it was just as difficult to fly as the oft-criticized F-104G. The complexity of F-104's cockpit, however, was in stark contrast to the Me-109, where the number of instruments were intentionally limited even below what was essential, to lessen the sensory load of pilots in combat. 82.131.210.163 (talk) 09:49, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Starting in 1956 Oberst Erich Hartmann was leader of „Waffenschule der Luftwaffe 10” at Oldenburg, which trained all fighter pilots. From 1959 to 1962 he was wing commander of the first jet fighter squadron „Jagdgeschwader 71 Richthofen”. 87.176.39.10 (talk) 18:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

My view
I was the first to revert the paragraph removal, solely on the basis that the text was cited, it's not the done thing to remove cited text without discussing it first. Sadly I gave up on this article a long time ago, partly because of a failed 'good article' review (with hindsight it wasn't ready) and the inability to shape it into anything near an unbiased factual account of the aircraft's history with other editors constantly adding their original thoughts or removing cited facts.

I have been accused in the past of defending the aircraft where in this case I re-instated text that was not favourable. I freely admit that it is a 'pet subject' of mine having researched the F-104 since the mid-1970s, I have something like 50 reference books on the type and I was the English translator for the German language 'F-40' series of aircraft datafiles including six or seven books on the Starfighter in German service.

Now to the point: I have not looked into Hartmann's criticism in detail, in his own view he thought he was right, not mentioned yet in the article is the fact that the F-104 was ordered on the strength of a flight test report of several contemporary types by Walter Krupinski, another WWII 'prop' ace (ignoring the proven bribery to procurement officials that later came to light). I have a copy of the original German language letter to the Luftwaffe high command. In his opinion the F-104 was the superior aircraft although it should be noted that he flew the F-104A interceptor which was a very different 'kettle of fish' when compared to the F-104G fighter-bomber variant the Luftwaffe actually placed into service.

Günther Rall was a 'prop ace', a proponent of the F-104 and ended his service career as Chief of the Luftwaffe. His deep involvement with the '104' programme is not yet mentioned in his article, there is a large section on the subject in his autobiography.

As for 'prop aces' not being qualified to voice an opinion on a jet aircraft, that's rubbish quite frankly. Chuck Yeager is a WWII 'prop' ace but he did quite well with jets and rocket powered aircraft later on. The article is quite kind to him and implies the aircraft was at fault but it is widely accepted (apart from Yeager himself) that the accident was his own fault, many reliable sources can be added for this but I suspect that they would be swiftly reverted.

In a nutshell, if I was to make any headway with this article it would need an inline cite after every other word, which is ridiculous, there are a lot of facts still missing fom the article and without these editors will persist in perpetuating Starfighter 'mythology'. I will stick to the de Havilland Tiger Moth, not much controversy there. If a dispute arises on this article I am happy to give my unbiased opinion on my talk page, and at a push, add an inline cite to the disputed content or amend it to suit. Sorry for going on but I despair with this particular article. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)    22:21, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * BTW, I must acknowledge the efforts of Jeff to keep this article on a relatively 'even keel'. I forgot to mention that I have a personal friend who is a retired Luftwaffe F-104 pilot that I visit most years, none of his views can be used here of course because it would be original research but you can imagine that I have gleaned an accurate overview of the German situation from his accounts. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)    22:37, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Eric "Winkle" Brown mentions the Luftwaffe's puzzling choice of the F-104 in his book Wings On My Sleeve and states (IIRC) that the Starfighter really needed to be flown by an experienced pilot otherwise it was very easy to get into trouble with it. He states that the version finally used by the Luftwaffe (F-104G) was considerably heavier than the earlier ones and had even less-forgiving tendencies, and so the high accident rate when flown by relatively inexperienced pilots was understandable, especially in North European weather conditions. The original low-level ground attack mission that the F-104 was bought to perform was ill-suited to the aircraft and he stated that he thought the Germans selected the F-104 licence for political reasons because it would enable them to 'leap-frog' into the supersonic fighter business, them having been banned from building high performance fighters since the end of WW II. He himself thought the Buccaneer would have been more suitable for the original intended role. BTW, Brown was Chief of the British Naval Mission to Germany for a time, and so knew a number of high-ranking German officers and politicians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 19:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

F-104 versus F-100 Accident Rates
The USAF accident data cited in the chart on page 21 of Martin Bowman’s book “Lockheed F-104 Starfighter” is often used to support the position (noted in this Wikipedia article) that the F-100 Super Sabre had a “much worse” or "statistically higher" Class A accident rate than the F-104. The purpose of this post is to refute that canard. The referenced chart accounts for only the first 750,000 hours of flying time for each cited aircraft (nine total) with the date each aircraft reached that number of hours. In the case of the F-100, 750,000 hours was achieved in May, 1959 – roughly six years after its initial flight. Conversely, the F-104 achieved just 600,000 hours by June 1977, or 23 years after first flying. The accident rate derived from this chart for the F-100 was 38.3 per 100,000 hours (287 destroyed); for the F-104, 26.7/100,000 (160 destroyed). However, by 1977, the F-104 was no longer flown by any USAF active duty, ANG or Reserve unit (the GAF -104’s at Luke AFB were not USAF assets), meaning that the number of hours reflected in the chart was virtually the entire total flown by the type in U.S service. On the other hand, the F-100 continued past the 750,000 hours reached by 1959 to fly an astounding 5,471,047 hours (“Hun Heaven”, Wings, Dec. 2005)! During that period, 889 aircraft were destroyed, resulting in a loss rate of 16.25 a/c per 100,000 hours (ibid). The initial accident rate (up to 750,000 hours, at least) for the F-100 was worse (but not significantly so) than the -104, but it was nearly half the -104's rate over the total active lives of each aircraft.

Based on this unequivocal data, I intend to completely revise the verbiage in the article (WITH references) to reflect the fact that the Starfighter's loss rate was the HIGHEST of any Century-series fighter. As I've pointed out several times, the chart in Bowman's book cannot be considered definitive, since the total flight hours of ALL the cited aircraft (except the -104) ends at 750,000 hours, not OVER 750,000 as erroneously stated in the article. Why Bowman used this chart in his book is beyond me, since it is practically useless as a valid comparison tool. Cherry-picking the data to support a particular viewpoint reduces the credibility of this article, which is otherwise well-executed. Finally, here's a few more stats to reflect on:

AIRCRAFT LOSSES AIRCRAFT TYPE  FIRST 90000 HOURS    FIRST 213000 HOURS AV-8A             25                  50 (Includes RAF) A-4               37                  64 A-7               37                  73 F-8               44                  79 A-6               16                  33 F-4               17                  44 F-100             39                  78 F-102             27                  38 F-104             43                  88 F-105             31                  47 F-106             15                  26 A-10              08                  17 F-15              04                  15 F-16              10                  30

Taken from "VSTOL Revisted", Major Joseph J. Krejmas, Jr., USMC, Command Staff College 1989

USAF Class A mishap rates through the end of 2007 (Class A = $1,000,000 damage or loss of life; does not necessarily mean the loss of an aircraft). Rates are per 100,000 flight hours and do not include combat losses:

F-16: 3.82 / 305 aircraft lost F-102: 13.69 / 259 aircraft lost.

F-104: 30.63 / 170 aircraft lost.

F-106: 9.47 / 120 aircraft lost.

A-7: 3.19 / 107 aircraft lost.

F-5: 8.82 / 40 aircraft lost.

F-15: 2.42 / 112 aircraft lost.

All numbers are from the USAF Safety Center at Kirtland AFB, NM and are for the lifetime of the aircraft.

Note: Both of the above charts were resourced from the world-wide web. It should be obvious from these examples that the -104's Class A mishap rate was higher than the F-100. Indeed, the loss of an additional 10 aircraft over the number given in the Bowman chart actually INCREASED the -104's loss rate from 26.7 to 30.63 per 100,000 hours. Dukeford (talk) 15:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Of course, though, the USAF accepted only 296 F-104s (all variants, including two XF-104s) for its own use, versus 2,249 F-100s. I would think that having better than a 5 to 1 ratio of a particular type over another might also skew the numbers... (Stats from Marcelle Size Knaack's "Encyclopedia of U.S. Air Force Aircraft and Missile Systems", Office of Air Force History, Wash., D.C., 1978). Mark Sublette (talk) 18:45, 13 May 2010 (UTC)Mark SubletteMark Sublette (talk) 18:45, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Pop culture vs. trivia
Removed: "The F-104 Starfighter was the vehicle mode of one particular ancient Seeker in theTransformers: Revenge of the Fallen film." No ref, and not referenced in Transformer episode, not notable nor historic. Such items can be noted in Talk and discussed according, with concesnus. LanceBarber (talk) 03:54, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Good point. That seems to be a minor & brief appearance.  If correct that would make it non-notable. -Fnlayson (talk) 14:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Aircraft on display section
Is it time to split this into List of F-104 Starfighters on display per List of F-101 Voodoo on display? This section is going to get very large if all of them are going to get listed. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)    11:08, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yep, the list here is very long. -fnlayson (talk) 02:52, 5 September 2010 (UTC)


 * List of surviving Lockheed F-104 Starfighters MilborneOne (talk) 10:50, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Any of these aircraft still airworthy?
Does anyone know if any F-104s are still flying, maybe restored or maintained by (rich!) enthusiasts or something? It would be good to add this info to the article... Another Matt (talk) 03:25, 2 December 2010 (UTC).


 * Yes, there are four still airworthy, see Canadair CF-104 Starfighter. The Starfighters Team has a website, I think they are working on one more. I guess the information is in that article and not here because they are Canadair 104s. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)    10:38, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Use by SwRI
In a recent Astronomy Magazine news article, the F-104 was mention as being used by SwRI to train pilots for sub-orbital flight. I don't know where to mention it in the article. --Red1530 (talk) 21:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Try some reading on the F-104N, that should answer your question.Petebutt (talk) 12:56, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Expand "Development" section
If anyone has any information on the development of the aircraft, please just dump them in the section, because I currently don't have access to any source. I'll help out with the wording.  Sp33dyphil  "Ad astra" 13:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The bulk of the prototype development is covered at Lockheed XF-104, the way the link is piped in the text it is not obvious though. The main F-104 and J79 development programme was carried out by the 17 YF-104As, I do have plenty of reliable sources on that phase of development but it would need a separate article to cover it (per summary style). There was enough negative noise when I created the XF-104 article (sent to AfD for lack of notability), an article on the YF-104A might meet the same wall. Later development might be covered in the 'variants' section, I've not looked, the 'G' and 'CF' were major internal redesigns and the 'S' was a missile, engine and avionics upgrade. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)    20:37, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * More summarizing the early development covered in the XF-104 article would help (where possible). And make room for later development text.  Subsections would help make the Development section seem not as long. -Fnlayson (talk) 04:14, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I started on the latter. Will see what I can do for adding some text to serve as a foundation for ones to build on. -Fnlayson (talk) 22:28, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Speeds in knots, please
When discussing aircraft speeds, miles per hour and kilometers per hour mean nothing. Speeds should be in knots. (75.65.220.111 (talk) 16:36, 3 September 2012 (UTC))