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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: F-104 Starfighter
Message-ID: <1990Aug11.015108.19651@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 11 Aug 90 01:51:08 GMT
References: <1990Jul31.223607.6367@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug7.040812.6711@cbnews.att.com>
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Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson)
>The biggest customer was West Germany.  In the 60's and 70's there were
>multiple scandals about its accident rate.

The most interesting thing about the German F-104 accident rate was that
the Royal Norwegian Air Force operated exactly the same model of Starfighter
for nearly a decade before their first fatal accident.  There is fairly
good evidence that the Luftwaffe Starfighter accident rate had a lot more
to do with poor maintenance and inadequately-trained pilots than with
inherent defects in the aircraft, although it was unquestionably a "hot"
and unforgiving plane.  In retrospect, it was a poor choice for a relatively
young and unsophisticated conscript-based air force like the early
postwar Luftwaffe.

>The F-104 ejection seat fired _down_...

Remember that the F-104 was designed in the mid-50s, when it was not so
easy to be sure that an ejection seat could clear a high tail.  That's
why the downward ejection.  It wasn't too unreasonable in what was meant
to be a high-altitude dogfighter.

Note also that the Luftwaffe replaced the downward-firing seats with
Martin-Baker upward-firing seats fairly early, because this was a fairly
obvious safety problem.  It didn't help much.  (The Norwegians, by the
way, didn't bother with the change, since they weren't having accidents.)

                                         Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                          henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry
-- 
It is not possible to both understand  | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
and appreciate Intel CPUs. -D.Wolfskill|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry