- Upton, Jim.
Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.
North Branch, MN: Specialty Press, 2003. ISBN 978-1-58007-069-0.
-
In October 1951, following a fact-finding trip to Korea
where he heard fighter pilots demand a plane with more speed
and altitude capability than anything in existence,
Kelly Johnson
undertook the design of a fighter that would routinely operate
at twice the speed of sound and altitudes in excess of 60,000
feet. Note that this was just four years after Chuck Yeager
first flew at Mach 1 in the rocket-powered
X-1,
and two years before the
Douglas Skyrocket
research plane first achieved Mach 2. Kelly Johnson was nothing if
not ambitious. He was also a man to deliver on his promises: in
December 1952 he presented the completed design to the Air Force,
which in March 1953 awarded a contract to build two experimental
prototypes. On March 4, 1954, just a year later, the first
XF-104 Starfighter made its first flight, and within another year
it had flown at Mach 1.79. (The prototypes used a less powerful
engine than the production model, and were consequently limited
in speed.) In April 1956 the YF-104 production prototype reached
Mach 2, and production models routinely operated at that
speed thereafter. (In fact, the
F-104
had the thrust to go faster:
it was limited to Mach 2 by thermal limits on its aluminium
construction and engine inlet temperature.)
The F-104 became one of the most successful international military
aircraft programs of all time. A total of 2578 planes were
manufactured in seven countries, and served in the air forces of
14 nations. The F-104 remained in service with the Italian
Air Force until 2004, half a century after the flight of the first
prototype.
Looking at a history like this, you begin to think that the days must
have been longer in the 1950s, so compressed were the schedules for
unprecedentedly difficult and complex engineering projects. Compare
the F-104's development history with that of the current U.S. air
superiority fighter, the
F-22, for which a Pentagon
requirement was issued in 1981, contractor proposals were solicited in
1986, and the winner of the design competition (Lockheed, erstwhile builder of the
F-104) selected in 1991. And when did the F-22 enter
squadron service with the Air Force? Well, that would be December
2005, twenty-four years after the Air Force launched the
program. The comparable time for the F-104 was a little more than
six years. Now, granted, the F-22 is a fantastically more complicated
and capable design, but also consider that Kelly Johnson's team
designed the F-104 with slide rules, mechanical calculators, and
drawing boards, while present day aircraft use modeling and simulation
tools which would have seemed like science fiction to designers
of the fifties.
This prolifically illustrated book, written by a 35 year
veteran of flight test engineering at Lockheed with a foreword
by a former president of Lockheed-California who was the
chief aerodynamicist of the XF-104 program, covers all aspects
of this revolutionary airplane, from design concepts, flight testing,
weapons systems, evolution of the design over the years,
international manufacturing and deployment, and modifications
and research programs. Readers interested in the history and
technical details of one of Kelly Johnson's greatest triumphs,
and a peek into the hands-on cut and try engineering of the 1950s will
find this book a pure delight.
May 2008 