Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military From: newave!john@uunet.UU.NET (John A. Weeks III) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: F-104 Ejection Seats and Other Trivia Message-ID: <1990Aug24.034122.636@cbnews.att.com> Date: 24 Aug 90 03:41:22 GMT References: <1990Aug18.182728.24742@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: NeWave Communications Ltd, Eden Prairie, MN Lines: 35 Approved: military@att.att.com From: newave!john@uunet.UU.NET (John A. Weeks III) In article <1990Aug18.182728.24742@cbnews.att.com> shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) writes: > Everyone talks about the F-104 in the past tense, but we're still > flying two of them in research projects. Don't say the F-104 _had_, > say it _has_ or you'll make me nervous. :-) They're also still being > flown by a number of foreign air forces. The "Wings" show on the Discovery channel said some really nice things about the F-104 (after 45 minutes of talking about all of the troubles that the plane had finding a customer). To paraphrase, they claimed that that most modern fighters, even the F-15, would find the F-104 very difficult to dispose with when the F-104 was flown in the right hands. Here is a bit of trivia: the magazine "Warplane" has a blurb about a rocket assisted F-104. The maximum height acheived by the plane was 113,890 feet. An attempt by Chuck Yeager to go to 140,000 feet ended in an ejection. The artical in "Warplane" goes on to mention an invasion scare in Taiwan during 1957/1958. It claims that USAF F-104 flew missions to intercept Chinese MIGs, and some of the F-104 returned without their Sidewinders. There are supposedly unconfirmed rumours that the F-104's scored several MIG kills. -john- -- =============================================================================== John A. Weeks III (612) 942-6969 john@newave.mn.org NeWave Communications ...uunet!rosevax!bungia!wd0gol!newave!john ===============================================================================