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Early Access: In Defense of the Starfighter
🕑 Added 2023-10-11 20:06:29 +0000 UTCEARLY ACCESS! Enjoy a new video on the F-104 Starfighter. Didn't I release this like a week ago? Yes, but thankfully due to a eagle eyed viewer a hiccup in the data became obvious. Annoying for me, as I had thought I had checked it all but extremely gratifying to have a community of people who can pick up on these things. So here it is then, the final cut on the Starfighter.
The F-104 Starfighter has a poor reputation. Popularly known as the "Widowmaker", let us have a look at the data showing crash and air crew death numbers, to check if it is truly - data wise - an exceptional case compared to its fellow Century Series aircraft.
Comments
Bill Lemmond
Hi, Chris, I'm finally catching up on some of your always-wonderful, thorougly-researched content. Research matters to me, a lot. I've heard some criicisms of the F-104. In text chat of a Twitch channel, MST3K, watching "The Starfighters," I menioned that the F-104 was one of very few 1950s and early 1960s single-engine jet fighters that my dad never flew. Another poster said that I probably would have lost my dad, otherwise. Well, Dad had a lotof hours in the F-86 and the F-100, too. He had to manually bail outof an F-86F. I'm wondering if, after allyour work, you'd enjoy relaxing and watching the Mystery Science Theater 3,000 episode, in which they joke their way through the movie "The Starfighters," Two words from the movie itself: "poopy suit," is what they call the sea survival uit, for flying across the Atlantic, for a European deployment. I'm guessing I'd have to find out how to buy and ship you a DVD that will play i you rregion, unless you own a region-free DVD (or Blu-Ray) player. Are you at all interested? I think you'd enjoy it.
Reichsbierminister
the video is listed as private on my side, is this correct?
Frank C
Pretty cool F-104 CGI. Back in the day of Frank being very young, F-104 Starfighter was a fun plastic model to build. The German Air Force flew many of those, yes? J-79 is 'the' engine. Many buddies worked on J-79's in Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy. Did you know individual turbine blades get pitting on leading edge, and, these pit's are removed by actually people filing these smooth. No kidding! A sharp blade brings in more air.
