Image credit: GAF via Key Publishing forum
Image credit: GAF via Key Publishing forum
I understand it’s a testbed but I’d hate to think of flying that thing in combat with the airfoil blocking the pilots view to the rear.
One of my greatest days included a backseat mission to the range in an F-104 out of Luke AFB. We dropped practice bombs and straffed the rags. What an experience. Often when we weren’t running intercepts with fighters from Luke and DM we would go to the F-104 simulator and take turns flying it. My cousin who had never been in service visited and I took him to simulator and he spent over an hour in it. The NCO taught us everything to do to reset the simulator and he would leave so that we had it to ourselves. Then the F-4 simulator arrived and we couldn’t get close to it. They were too busy and it was too fragile.
I am a huge fan. As a kid I built the revelle (I think?) model. I remember it being “ the missle with a man in it “ and watching the right stuff as Chuck Yeager takes it into near space with the modified nf104a starfighter with added rocket motor to get him up where there is no air around 120000ft. Of course he couldn’t get it out of a flatspin so he could not restart the jet nor dead stick it and he bailed out.
Great fast Kelly Johnson vehicle
British Aerospace EAP
Rockwell-MBB X-31
What was learned from these two test planes--especially the delta wing with forward canard configuration and studying how to get maximum maneuverability from this configuration--shaped the final design of the Typhoon.
Starfighters dug more trenches across Europe than the Wehrmacht.
Thank you for this historical note on the F-104