Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Had to laugh What was the F104 good for?

Both services (Air Force and Navy) moved away from the "fighter" concept and more to the "interceptor" model in the 50s, exibit A: the F-4 Phantom. Reason being, they needed to get there FAST and shoot down incoming nuclear armed Soviet Bombers before weapons release. Hell, the Air Force even had a Nuke air-to-air missile called the Genie. Then came the real world (Vietnam) where nimble MiG 15s, 17s and 19s (the 21 not so much)could out maneuver (in the horizontal) a lot of our stuff and we learned how to fight with the F-4 and of course the MiG-Master, the F-8 Crusader. We learned the lesson and the results were the SUPERB F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Falcon. These three could do it all, intercept AND turn and burn. Then came the F-22 and nothing even comes close. Way too expensive but there's just nothing out there. Now it seems we are forgetting the lessons of the past and doomed to repeat our mistakes with that flying fat-chick, the F-35..

I suppose it shouldn't surprise us really as the 1950's really were a technological revolution as far as aircraft and missiles were concerned.

Re the threat from the Soviet high altitude bombers, the USAF and the Russian airforce both toyed with the idea of nuclear powered bombers and both had flying test beds by the 60's...

The USN, not be beaten, wanted a nuclear powered flyingboat and commission Saunders-Roe about the possibility of converting one of their flying boats as a test bed...

Of the century series fighters the one that always strikes me as a "what could have been" type plane was the F 106. Designed as a pure interceptor, it's low wing loading made it very nimble. Had McNamara not forced the Air Force to adopt the F-4, the F 106 might well have been developed into a more multi role craft over time and would have definitely been a better dogfighter than the F-4.

The F-4 kind of squashed a lot of development of different types in the 1960s. It was just good enough to do about everything without really excelling at much. But it was there and already developed, so spending all that money to develop something marginally better in a particular area, didn't make much sense. The F-8 was another victim of the F-4.

About the only F-4s that could turn was the USMC's F-4S with special leading edge slats and the Brit K version. It did have some great attributes and if you flew it to it's strenghts (like Cunningham, Olds, etc) it was a for sure MiG killer. The F-8 was just a single mission (well two if you count the photo version) and lacked the "growth potential" to adapt to new weaponry. What Johnson/McNamara did was push for that lumbering "flying grape", the A-7 (ostensibly a "short" F-8 converted to Light Attack) to keep the Texas firm afloat. The F-4 is one hell of an airplane and the Germans really flew it to it's strengths.
The 106 was a good one to be sure, but it is a proven fact single seat platforms do not fare as well in a multi-bogey/IADS problems as the two seaters and the reason is obvious,an extra set of eyes and brain to keep your six clear and that is my only complain about the F-22 and of course the POS 35.

jorge1, Didn't the Navy also have a plane that ejected two of it's crewmen downward. If memory serves me right it was an electronics warfare aircraft that was carrier certified and carried four crewmen.

I would have thought it faster than that. We went faster than that in the Tomcat. The -104 was an interesting aircraft with a very narrow set of requirements to meet. Turning was not one of them!

I've thought about that a bit and the 50's really were a perfect storm for technological progress.

A large world war forced designers to separate the wheat from the chaff and those lessons were still in mind, or perhaps the engineers with that mind set were still very much in their prime. Plus we had all of the best Nazi designers on our team, at least the ones the Russians didn't get.

As you note, the threat of instant annihilation was a big incentive for developing new weapon systems, as much or even more so than the threat of German land and air forces with conventional bombs had been.

And finally, and I think this may have more impact that it seems on the surface, the separate Air Force and it's partner NASA were fairly new bureaucracies, with the Air Force staffed by men who had personally flown and commanded other men in a bitter and large scale war. They got things done and while corporate bribery and favoritism appear as soon as a "Chief of Procurement" sign goes up on someone's door, it hadn't completely cut off original thinking. In the 70's and beyond NASA and most of the Armed Forces became bloated and inefficient bureaucracies which are the death knell of creativity.

The early 60's were an extension of the 50's and if Viet Nam and LBJ's great society hadn't gotten in the way, who knows what a bunch of folks who went from missiles blowing up on launch pads to a successful moon landing in only 10 or so years may have done?

The F-104 pushed the envelope. It was created to fight what they were imagining the next war would look like, and their imaginations envisioned nuclear war with Russia. Not conventional war in Vietnam.

When you consider what they envisioned, the F-104 was pretty bad-azz for what it was created for; especially when you consider the year it was birthed.

But the F-104 turned out to be rather ill equipped for the real wars that we actually fought.

I will say this. All polished up in bare aluminum, she really was a looker.

No, although the A3D Skywarrior (A3D morosely = All 3 Dead) did not have ejection seats and had a "slide" out the belly that they bailed out from. It was later the EA-3 EW variant. I had one of my classmates killed in one in midair in one over Alaska and the loss of one in the Med off Nimitz in a very bad mishap ended it's carrier days. There's a nice memorial to it at the NSA Memorial park.

http://cryptologicfoundation.org/visit/museum/vigpark.html

The A-3 was gone from regular service when I was on the flight deck in the mid 80s but there were a few reserve squadrons still flying the KA-3 tanker variant. Doing crash and salvage drills on those things made me real happy we didn't see them very often.

Is there an echo in here?
"Both services (Air Force and Navy) moved away from the "fighter" concept and more to the "interceptor" model in the 50s, exibit A: the F-4 Phantom. Reason being, they needed to get there FAST and shoot down incoming nuclear armed Soviet Bombers before weapons release. Hell, the Air Force even had a Nuke air-to-air missile called the Genie. Then came the real world (Vietnam) where nimble MiG 15s, 17s and 19s (the 21 not so much)could out maneuver (in the horizontal) a lot of our stuff and we learned how to fight with the F-4 and of course the MiG-Master, the F-8 Crusader. We learned the lesson and the results were the SUPERB F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Falcon. These three could do it all, intercept AND turn and burn. Then came the F-22 and nothing even comes close. Way too expensive but there's just nothing out there. Now it seems we are forgetting the lessons of the past and doomed to repeat our mistakes with that flying fat-chick, the F-35..

Yeah, but the F-104 wasn't really a classic interceptor in the American tradition either as that it lacked a good radar and range. It was more of a point interceptor and slasher like the Mig 21. Supposedly It was built after listening to Korean War vets complain that the Mig 15 was faster and better in the climb than the F-86 and could disengage at will. They thought the F-86 was too heavy and complex, so Kelly Johnson designed a stripped down rocket that could not be beaten in speed and climb. But, no one in official circles really asked for it or wanted it.

There's our Quip o' the Day... hell, make it Quip of the Year, as far as fighter aircraft lore is concerned...

... but seriously: we needed the F104 because without it, Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) would not have been able to drop napalm on his elementary school, nor would we have ever heard the immortal radio call:

Calvin's Wingman: "Bandits at 2 o'clock!"

Calvin: "Roger that. What do we do until then?"

That was one of Waterson's best but it was an F-4. He also had some good ones with F-15's and F-14's.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2009/06/07/

Most of Dailykos stuff is crap but this was actually pretty good and has some nice illustrations of the landing pattern and such.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/2/2/1360449/-The-not-quite-right-stuff-F-104-Starfighter

Sorry for the echo...I didn't see your post.

Tff

Damn, Pugs, you're right and I knew it was an F4! I got brain-fart disease baaaad today.

In my defense, I can say with some pride that my brain was exhausted after a week in which I did 40 hours of work, 25 hours of FAR/AIM study and 11.2 hours flight time to prepare for my FAA checkride yesterday, which I (saints be praised!) passed.

All y'all fighter jocks look out! I'm on the loose now with my C172 XP!

Congrats! I intend to get to civilian flying but like so many things now I have the money and not the time. I suppose it's because I spend too much time making the money. There's likely a lesson there someplace.

Yeah, it's the whole money-time continuum thing... you can trade time for money, or vice versa, but striking the balance that lets you live comfortably but without undue stress is the hard part!