Help!! Help!!
Alright, whatever. I'm Matthew Bruchette, and this
is Behind the Wings. And I can't get out.
Help!
Oh, look at that!
That's why that's painted yellow and black.
I don't have to be scared at all.
It was just a lever. This is your viewers choice, the F-104 Starfighter. And I'm in
the front cockpit of this thing. It was called a missile with a man in it, and
you can see why. I mean, this thing is not big, and, sadly, there's not a lot of the
instrument cluster left. Over the years, those things have disappeared, but that's okay.
It is still super cool to be in one of these things, and I'm actually sitting
in the ejection seat of an F-104C. Now, these guys originally ejected downward
and not upward. That does not sound like fun to me. We've actually got one out on
the floor. Let's go take a closer look at it.
It's not exactly the same model, but
it'll definitely give you an idea of what this thing was all about.
I'm getting out of this, before I get stuck in here.
So, like we discussed in the cockpit,
this is the ejection seat for an F-104. This one happens to be a High Q
seat made by Stanley Aviation, right here in Denver, Colorado, in fact, not too many
miles away from where we are right now. Now, one of the cool things about this
ejection seat is it actually used Spurs. Now, why is this called a spur?
Well, obviously, because it goes on your boot. You would literally strap this to the
heel of your boot and then connect yourself to the seat. How cool is that?
Now, like any other seat, to initiate the ejection, you just pull this handle.
But then two things happen that are pretty much different than any other seat out there.
Like we said, you're attached to the seat, but, as you pull that handle,
this cable sucks your leg back in. Then these come forward and these really
heavy-duty nets suck your arms to your body. Now, why do you want to do that?
Well, if you're ejecting at like 2. something Mach, and your arms and legs
are flailing around, not only do you look silly, and your other
pilots are going to make fun of you, but you're probably going to end up breaking
something. And, of the two, that is definitely the worst part, because you
don't want broken arms and legs when you're down on the ground trying to get
away from the bad guys. So, let's go see some other things about the F-104 that
make it such a cool plane. Not only the seat, but let's go check out the wings.
You got to have one of those in every episode, right? So, here we are at the wing
of the F-104, which, when you think about, it is what makes an F-104 an F-104.
This thing is tiny. It's a 55-foot-long fuselage, but with a 20-foot wingspan.
In 1954, when this thing made its first flight, Lockheed had figured out that the
best wing for this airplane was a mid-mounted, trapezoidal, very thin
airfoil. Now, if you look at a P-51 Mustang, the leading edge of that wing is huge.
It's really big around. This not so much.
In fact, when these guys were on the ground, they actually had to put guards
on the leading edge of this wing, so the ground crew wouldn't beat themselves up
and cut their arms and legs. That's nuts. Come here. Check this out.
You know, I could probably shave with this thing
My boss would be happier if I did that.
Anyway, look at this. Look how thin this is.
This is nuts. So, what are you going to put in this wing? I'll tell you. Nothing.
No gas tanks, no landing gear. Nada. That's all down here. So, all your gas tanks, your
landing gear was all in the fuselage. Now, they did have a couple of hard points on
this thing, so you could put a bomb on it. Did that in Vietnam. Out on the wingtips,
as you probably saw, we had some gas tanks. You could even put some missiles
there, but, for the most part, this wing was to make you go fast and to turn
really large. This thing had a huge turning radius, like say the state of
Nabraska. That big. But, enough about that, let's go see what made this thing go
so fast. The super cool jet engine.
Alright, so these are the turkey feathers of the
afterburner of the J79 engine. This monster, which took up a good three
quarters of this fuselage, remember 55-feet long, so that's a big old engine.
Propelled this guy to Mach 2.2. That's over 1,400 miles an hour.
No wonder they called it a missile with a man in it. Now, J79 was not without its
problems. When the Germans started flying, their F-104G's, they had a huge problem
with crashes. In fact, there was kind of a joke going around Germany. How could you
get your own F-104 Starfighter? Easy, just wait for one, and it would land
in your front yard. Yeah, it didn't have a great safety record. In fact, it's got the
worst safety record of all the century series fighters. But it still doesn't
mean that this thing wasn't cool and did its job pretty well. Now, what we haven't
done in a while is we have not given you guys a real Behind the Wings kind of
moments. Something that nobody else knows. We're going to do that right now, and it
involves the nose of this plane, and something that's near and dear to my heart.
I can't wait. You're going to love this. Come on.
Alright, so I wrote my master's thesis about nose art in World War II, so I geek out
about anything nose art related. So, using your imagination or maybe our
super awesome cameraman can help you out. Right here would be a giant pink
pussycat cartoon. Yeah, buddy. This guy actually flew with
that nose art, when it flew with the 479th Tactical Fighter Wing in Udorn, Thialand
during the Vietnam War. Oh my god. How cool is that? Very cool, in my opinion.
So this guy actually flew out of George Air Force Base in California with
the 479th. Went to Vietnam and then ended up with the Puerto Rico
National Guard flying for them. It's a pretty good tour of service. That plane
got around, and now we got it.
Alright, well here I am again. Hopefully, I don't get stuck, like I did last time.
Anyway, thank you guys so much for choosing the F-104 as your viewer's
choice video of Behind the Wings. Because it has been awesome! Stick with us, because
next time, we are going to the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, and it's
going to be awesome. Really looking forward to that one.
Alright, so if you've got questions or comments, you know where to go: Facebook
or YouTube, and we will answer them there. Also, if you would like to support Behind
the Wings, please check out the link in the description of this video, because
that would be awesome. And so we'll just...
Oh no! Oh, no! AH. Oh, no. Oh. Agh!