Guided tour around the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter - Century Series Ep. 4

Video from the channel Paul Stewart about Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 12:33. Language: English. Video type: Onboard.

A guided tour around a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter on display in a museum. It is the fourth episode in a series on Century Series fighters and covers the aircraft from the nose to the tail and cockpit.

On the nose, the forward-mounted pitot tube and the radar of the AN/ASG-14 fire-control system; on the port side, the M61 rotary cannon, fed by a 725-round drum. The in-flight refuelling probe looks bolted onto the fuselage, reflecting the lack of internal space. The side intakes have a fixed cone, with no variable geometry. The wing, very thin and swept, needed ground covers, tip tanks, and a boundary-layer control system that blew engine air over the flaps. Also shown are the arrestor hook for runways, the outward-canted main gear, the nozzle of the General Electric J79, producing 15,600 lb of thrust with afterburner, and the T-tail, with its risk of pitch-up at high angle of attack. The cockpit is used to explain the first downward-firing ejection seat.

It saw little use in the USAF, but was exported and built under licence in countries such as Japan, Spain and Canada; the Luftwaffe used it until 1991 and Italy retired it in 2004. NASA used it for research, including the rocket-powered NF-104A, which climbed to 120,000 feet, and it was also tested with zero-length launch. Germany lost 292 of its 916 aircraft and 116 pilots, and in 1966 an F-104 collided in flight with the XB-70.