Created as a day fighter by Lockheed as one of the "Century Series" of fighter aircraft for the United States Air Force (USAF), it was developed into an all-weather multirole aircraft in the early 1960s and produced by several other nations, seeing widespread service outside the …

Introduced in Update "Starfighters", the F-104A is quite a capable aircraft thanks to its J79 engine, cannon, and missiles. The F-104A regularly faces subsonic aircraft like the F-86 and Yak-38 so players should stick to using its immense speed and boom and zooming targets.

Dec 20, 2024 · The Lockheed F-104A Starfighter was a single-place, single engine supersonic interceptor. It was designed by a team lead by the legendary Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson. The F-104A is 54.77 feet (16.694 meters) long with a wingspan of 21.94 feet (6.687 meters) and overall height of 13.49 feet (4.112 meters).

On 18 May 1958, an F-104A set a world speed record of 1,404.19 mph (2,259.82 km/h). [3] Three demilitarized F-104A airframes with an additional 6,000 lbf (27 kN) Rocketdyne LR121/AR-2-NA-1 rocket engine and modified systems, used for astronaut training at altitudes up to …

F-104A. From the YF-104A Lockheed build the F-104A aircraft. This aircraft (total of 153 build) was purely designed for air-superiority as a pure-Mach2 interceptor. The aircraft was powered by the General Electric J79-GE3B engine which was replaced in some aircraft late sixties by the more powerfull GE-19 engine.

Often called “the rocket with a man in it,” the F-104 was the first operational aircraft to sustain Mach 2 speed in flight. It suffered from short range, obsolete avionics, high landing speed...

May 23, 2021 · First USAF fighter to fly above Mach 2, the F-104 Starfighter made its appearance in the 1950s when it was decided to replace the still airworthy F-100 Super Sabre with a fighter which could be used mainly as an interceptor.

On May 18, 1958, an F-104A set a world speed record of 1,404.19 mph, and on December 14, 1959, an F-104C set a world altitude record of 103,395 feet. The Starfighter was the first aircraft to hold simultaneous official world records for speed, altitude and time-to-climb.

The F-104C was hard to tell from the F-104A, the most distinctive difference being that the F-104C could be fitted with a fixed inflight refueling probe to the right of the cockpit for probe-&-drogue refueling.

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter of the U.S. Air Force, its history, design, specifications, photographs, production numbers, and surviving aircraft.