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

hello and behind me is at locked f104 star fighter and this is the fourth video in my series on the century Jets now this aircraft itself was a bit of a rejection of the ongoing idea whereby fighter aircraft were becoming increasingly more complex so this itself was especially light and small for the time hence why it was nicknamed a missile with a man this wasn't actually used that much by the Americans but went on to be exported to many other Allied countries around the world in our first video we looked at the F100 super saber and its unique area intake located in the nose and the design reasons for that amongst other things then we looked at the f101 voodoo which was extremely fast and Powerful being the only Sentry jet with two engines next was the f102 which was the first USA jet with a delta wing and now we're looking at the fascinating f104 star fighter this single seat air superiority fighter was initially designed as a day fighter but the role was later changed to an all- weather multiroll aircraft starting at the nose we have the PTO tube kept well forward of the fuselage by this large boom again the reason being that the air was thought to be compressed in front of the aircraft at very high speeds therefore this kept that instrument well ahead of that to avoid any interference inside the nose cone was an AAS G14 fire control system using a 24-in radar antenna it had a search range of around 20 mi but later models increased that to 40 Mi although the actual Target tracking mode had to be within around 10 Mi of Interest it only worked on targets above 3,000 ft as anything below that would be affected by the radar return from the ground this is why aircraft would fly at very low altitudes to avoid radar contact moving on we have this single m61 rotary Cannon located here on the port side and this was the first aircraft to carry this type of weapon here's an example of one in front of an F50 it was fed by a 725 round drum behind the pilot seat so that when it was firing at 6,000 rounds per minute it would run out of bullets after only 7 Seconds of continuous fire during testing they found that exhaust gases from the firing built up within the compartment leading to an explosion so they had to bleed some a from the engine blew it into that compartment to provide a positive pressure to expel the gas outwards on the top of of armament it had seven hard points with a capacity of 4,000 lb and could carry missiles such as the A9 Sidewinder or other bombs and rockets above here is the in a refueling probe and what's interesting is that how it almost looks like it was stuck on the side of the fuselage as an afterthought and it highlights how little room there is within the fuselage for anything else it reminds me of the temporary refueling system used on the f102 to cross the Pacific Ocean to Vietnam moving further after we come to the side mounted air intakes it's lifted off the fuselage to avoid the slow and turbulent fuselage boundary layer and this here is a fixed Inlet cone there's no variable geometry inlets like the SR71 or Concord so at higher Mark numbers the excess air would bypass the engine inlets and move around it thus providing cooling to the engine if you look closely you can see this which sucks out the boundary layer that has formed over the inlet cone again keeping the air flow into the engine as smooth as possible the cones itself would create shock waves inside the inlet which lowered the incoming air to subsol speed just prior to ingestion by the engine now let's have a look at this fascinating Wing it's further AR along the fuselage than most aircraft wings and was incredibly thin the idea was that this would reduce drag thus allowing for the high speeds that they were targeting the Leading Edge in fact was so thin that not Not only would it bruise a ground crew who headbutted it but it would actually often cut and draw blood early on they learned to install protective coverings for when they were on the ground the wings were trapezoidal which was and remains quite a novel design they decided that it would be the best option to allow high speeds as well as create enough lift especially at high altitudes the engineers certainly succeeded with their performance figures as it was the first production aircraft to achieve Mac 2 and the first to reach an altitude of 100,000 ft after taking off on its own power yes the X15 reached high altitudes but remember that it was launched from a B-52 mother ship the f104 also held the time to climb record in fact in 1958 it was the first aircraft to simultaneously hold that record in addition to the air speed and altitude records although while the thin Wing helped with the performance it didn't leave any room inside to hold any fuel hence why they use these wing tip mounted fuel tanks which could also be removed and replaced with missiles and in here they could hold up to a third of the aircraft's fuel remember that the fuselage wasn't especially large either so fuel storage was a problem a Noel low speed lift device is the boundary layer control system which bleeds air from the engine and blows it over the Leading Edge flaps when they are extended thus increasing lift now you can't see them here because the flaps are not extended but here's a diagram and you can see that at Point number two is where the bleed air would be released the problem is though that the pilots would have to keep the throttle up to maintain this lift but also slow enough to actually land thus adding to the complexity and higher speeds of the landing process moving further ra you have this Bright Red Hook and this was designed to capture cables that could be used on ground base runways in an emergency and to avoid the aircraft having an Excursion and potentially crashing this could be used to catch a cable there were no plans to use this on an aircraft carrier moving down here is the main landing gear now because the wing is so thin there was no room for the gear inside it therefore it had to fold out from the main fuselage but because that would create an extremely narrow and unstable track for an aircraft that already had a very high takeoff in landing speed the strut had to be angled outwards for comparison's sake here's the main Landing gear on an f102 which folds up into a much thicker wing and is directly angled downwards an interesting fact is that when NATO countries purchased these they needed reinforced landing gears and larger tires that they could operate on rougher tracks and potentially even grass the problem was that there were already the absolute minimum excess room in the fuselage so they actually had to install a bulge in the wall to allow the larger tires to fit in we'll move our way back and look at the outlet for the the single General Electric j79 Turbo Jet and if you look closely you can make out the after burning device where the fuel is pumped out and ignites producing 15,600 lb of thrust pushing it to a top speed of Mac 2.2 here's a photo of one sitting next to the YF 104a prototype and it demonstrates how much of the fuselage was just the engine it was a solid engine and four of these j79 were used in The b58 Hustler and two of them in the F4 Phantom 2 looking up we have the TA tail the horizontal stabilizer was moved up to the top of the vertical fin which keeps the fuselage smooth and aerodynamic it's up above the Disturbed air behind the wings and there were also concerns with early jets that uncontained engine failures could destroy this mechanism if it was right next to the engine thus increasing the likelihood that the aircraft would then become uncontrollable so it was kept up away from the engine to avoid that risk but a disadvantage was that during High angles of attack air flow could be blocked by the fuselage and wings thus causing it to pitch up further and spin to manage the problem there was a stick Shaker installed that would alert the pilot that they were pulling back too hard and physically move the stick forward but there were also instances where this pitch down system kicked in erroneously which would obviously be very dangerous at low altitudes so Crews were actually encouraged to turn it off there was also a drag shoot behind for highspeed Landings we'll move forward and underneath the massive wing of this b57 we'll have a look inside the cockpit for this single pilot and while most of them did have single Pilots there were two seat variants such as this f14b built for several export countries to use as trainers early models had a downward firing ejection seat due to concerns about clearing the tail if it was fired upwards this obviously raised serious questions about low altitude ejections in in fact the flight manual suggested Pilots roll the aircraft at low altitudes and eject when the aircraft was upside down which doesn't seem overly realistic eventually they were replaced with upward firing seats as technology improved another consideration was the potential high speeds of an ejection and the shoes were connected to cables and there were Nets around the sides of the seat that would wrap the pilot up to ensure that the limbs wouldn't flow about and breaking bones after the ejection and the shoes would be brought in tightly to the seat by those cables the f104 wasn't that popular in North America its safety record and limited armaments held it back in the US Air Force dramatically reduced their orders although it did serve in Vietnam it went on to be used and even built under license in Allied countries including Japan Spain and Canada the Luft waffer used their up until 1991 and the Italians were the last to retired theirs in 2004 although there are still some flying today for research and enthusiasm purposes the star fighter was also used by NASA in a research and development role this f104g model was fitted with a Centerline pylon and if you look closely you can actually see the heat resistant tiles that went on to be used on the space shuttle undergoing testing here that Pon could also be used for additional fuel tanks missiles and even a nuclear bomb the star fighter took part in the zlll tests which stood for the zero length launch system like the F100 they attached a rocket to the underside allowing it to take off without a Runway and almost instantaneously and then at higher altitude the rocket would then just be dropped another version the NF 104a was modified to include a rocket D rocket engine that could push it up to 120,000 ft in altitude where it was then used for research purposes because the air was so thin at that altitude the control surfaces would then become useless therefore it was fitted with a reaction control system like what we saw with the space shuttle and X15 and these had 12 thrusters using hydrogen peroxide to control what was sort of now a spaceship here is chucka in one and Neil Armstrong also flew these now the f104 did have a very poor safety record in fact the German public called it the Widowmaker as they lost 292 of the 916 delivered in total and 116 Pilots out of all the centur Jets this had the highest loss rate although the most famous loss was in 1966 when one was involved in an inair collision with the xp70 destroying both aircraft killing two and seriously injuring another but it is a fascinating aircraft and while it certainly had flaws it's an incredible piece of engineering that has contributed significantly to the development of other aircraft incredibly the contract was signed and it first flew all within a single year what really stood out to me seeing it in the metal was how small it is other Sentry Jets such as the f101 and 105 were propably big aircraft while this really was a missile with a man stuck on the top thanks for watching the century series of videos and please give it a thumbs up as it really helps promote the video and helps me avoid including product placements that I'm paid to say are amazing and don't forget to check out my early videos and coming up next will be my tour around the f105 Thunder Chief thanks again

Channel: Paul Stewart

Views: 13,564

Keywords: century jets, century series, century series usa, General Electric J79 afterburning turbojet, lockheed, lockheed f104, f-104, starfighter, lockheed starfighter, paul stewart, paul stewart aviation, f104 tour, f104 guided tour, dayton, aviation, airplane, planes, aircraft, usaf, cold war, paul stewart lockheed, national museum of the us air force, paul stewart air force

Id: jc3u-1CNwk8

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023