F104 Starfighter

If that Starfighter is manned there must be some serious pucker factor going down.

As if that wasn't enough to worry you, - Isn't that the plane in which there were some pilot fatalities, failure of oxygen, or something like that, I seem to remember?

Kenny, your right, if something went wrong, it had the glide path of a brick.

The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was a single-engine, high-performance, supersonic interceptor aircraft that served with the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1958 until 1967. It continued in service with the Air National Guard until it was phased out in 1975. Subsequently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) continued to fly a small fleet. NASA F-104s flew in support of the X-15 and XB-70 projects. F-104s continued supporting the spaceflight programs until they were retired in 1995 and replaced by F/A-18 Hornets.
An updated Starfighter sold well among the NATO air forces of Germany, Canada, and Italy: these high-speed fighter-bomber variants continued in service until the mid-1980s. The last Italian Air Force examples were retired in 2004. The later-model Starfighter versions gained a reputation as a "flying coffin" and "Witwenmacher" (Widowmaker) for their high accident rate. In Germany and Italy alone, more than 400 airplanes were lost in accidents. Many air forces using F-104s eventually replaced them with the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Read More