The F104 has to down in history as one of the most useless and downright dangerous aircraft ever conceived. Firstly, as it was lauded as the “missile with a man in it” it was felt that as it was easily capable of mach 2+, the ejection seat was designed to fire downwards to prevent the pilot from hitting the tail. This was all well and good, but if the pilot got in to difficulty with the approach and landing (only the SR71 and the Space Shuttle had faster approaches than the 104) as so often happened, he punched out downward and drilled a bloody great hole in the ground. Only after the wisdom of this idea was fully exposed, the aircraft was re-designed with a conventional upward firing ejection seat. If the angle of attack exceeded 20 degrees, and induced a stall, the stub wings blanked out the flow of air to the T tail. Chuck Yeager had his most dangerous bale out whilst flying an NF104 to 70,000ft, had a flame out and the resulting flat spin was impossible to recover from. He ejected and the red hot rocket tube on the base of the ejection seat smashed his pressure visor on his helmet causing severe burns, as his suit was pressurised with pure oxygen.
The USAF rejected the 104, but Lockheed pulled off the deal of the century by offering the Starfighter to several NATO airforces, with significant bribes to boot. Hundreds of pilots lost their lives courtesy of a nod and a wink. Once the truth of the deal came out in the late 1970’s the Carter administration passed legislation prohibiting such deals with individual governments. The 104 has joined an unfortunate list of truly pointless and downright dangerous aircraft that most countries around the world have produced during the 20th century.
