Another Zip and a Peculiar 109

AheyBop-A-ReeBop; It's Friday Again!

It's amazing, simply amazing, how quickly the week passes. This one's been fun, and I hope you've enjoyed what we've done with it. Please remember that I'm open to your comments and criticisms should you be so inclined, which is an invitation to write and tell me all about it, within reason, of course. That address is replicainscale@yahoo.com . I'm also still looking for photographic material on the 21st TFW or 39th AD at either Misawa or Kunsan during the late 50s and early 60s; if you hold photography on the subject I'd sure like to see it!

Also, I've received a few requests for different views of particular aircraft that I've published. That's fair, and I'll help when I can, but what gets published is generally all there is at the moment so don't be unduly disappointed if I can't do much to help out with requests for additional shots. Believe me, I feel your pain!

Anyway, let's get right down to it with a couple of my favorite topics.

Sometimes the Zipper is a Tub

Lockheed produced two different "trainer" variants of the F-104 for the Air Force; the B model, which was a two-seat variant of the A, and the D model, which was a two-seater based on the F-104C. Both featured the enlarged vertical tail that would adapted to all subsequent Starfighters. The Bs and Ds may, to some extent, have been responsible for creating the rumor that the F-104 had no range to speak of (if you take things on internal fuel only, the Zip actually had a greater unrefueled range than the F-4 if the pilot could make minimal use of the AB) because it was the variant that most senior officers got to fly in, and a great many of those worthies wanted to fly fast, since Fast was seemingly what the F-104 was all about. In a jet Fast means afterburner and afterburner means Gas Guzzler with a capital G, which ultimately translates to Bingo Fuel and a bad reputation. You get the picture.

That notwithstanding, here are a couple of shots of my favorite airplane to end the week.

This photo was taken at the NWC at China Lake on 11 February, 1972, and shows an F-4D carrying an AGM-62 Walleye ("Seek-Bang 2" is notated on the back of the photo; does anyone have details on that?)  with F-104D-5-LO  57-1317 preparing to fly chase. The shot gives an excellent representation of the white upper wings common to either natural metal or gray USAF Starfighters. Although the original photo is annotated as being taken in 1971, the serial number presentation on the Phantom is more consistent with that found in the USAF during 1966-67, when Walleye was undergoing evaluation trials and entering initial service with the Navy.  USN LHL155048

57-1316, another F-104D-5-LO,  in flight out of NWC China Lake in June of 1967. This natural metal F-104D may have been flying chase for a Navy program since the original photo was taken by that service. Note that both slats and flaps are slightly deployed.  USN LO88757

F-104B-1-LO 56-3719 on the ground at Edwards AFB. Note the striped test boom and the number "80" that's positioned above the serial number. Even the tub is a Clean Machine!  USAF Photo

An absolutely gorgeous shot of F-104B-10-LO 57-1304 assigned to Air Material Command. The striping on the white vertical stab, tip tanks, and pitot boom is noteworthy. Modelers, take a look at the underside of the horizontal stab; it's natural metal. I have no idea which Lockheed photographer took this, but he was good!  Lockheed LA6637-8

Anybody who's ever been around tactical jets knows they're loud. Any airplane powered by the J-79 is really loud. And the J-79-powered F-104, with its bleed air systems functioning on the ground, is loud beyond belief. We can hope that the airman parking F-104B-1-LO 56-3723 is wearing earplugs (although I personally doubt that he is); he certainly isn't wearing any other sort of noise attenuation. Things were a little looser back in the 60s! This airframe ended up in the Taiwanese AF.   KAFB History Office, Neg No Unknown

3723 in the chocks at Kelly. Early on the Zip was given the PR nickname of "missile with a man in it". This view illustrates why.  KAFB History Office, Neg No Unknown

And here's today's Mystery Meat. The aircraft is F-104D-5-LO s/n 57-1315, and it was photographed at China Lake. There's a SysCom badge on the intake trunk just aft of the fuselage star, but there's also that what-ever-it-is hanging off the back end. At first that piece of sheetmetal appears to be some sort of test installation to reduce the airplane's not-inconsiderable IR plume, but it doesn't seem to be particularly well-attached to the airframe. I spent years thinking I knew what was going on here, but now I'm not so sure!
This bird ended up being transferred to Taiwan.   USN Photo, Neg No Illegible


Finally, Something on the Bf109!

And we say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, since valued friend Bad Brad says it so often (and, I can pretty well assure you, doesn't really mean it! I recently got hooked on the Bf-109E-3s and -4s that were used in the Balkans Campaign of 1941 because of their heraldry, and would like to offer a recent model of one of them as today's parting shot.

It's the Tamiya Bf-109E-3 done as the mount of Hpt Herbert Ihlefeld, CO of II(J)/LG 2 as photographed at Hesckemet, Hungary, at the beginning of the campaign. The aircraft was well-travelled before getting to LG 2 (JG 52 was a previous owner) and had apparently been involved in night fighter trials at one time. Surviving photographs show the installation of a Peil Gerat IV antenna cover on the aft ventral surface of the fuselage and irregular blotching over the upper-wing splinter pattern. I was drawn to the scheme because of the colorful theater markings and think the model to be a reasonable representation of the real aircraft, but this one's a little tough to figure out.

Oh yeah, and I owe you folks an apology. I wasn't really very happy with the quality of some of the photos of models that I published last week; they were a little too soft for my liking. Today I noticed that I'd somehow moved the camera's resolution off of "fine" and over to "really gnarly", which is what caused the problem. It's fixed now, and any other problems in resolution rest squarely on my shoulders. I can't blame the camera any more! Just thought you ought to know that...

Lordy, I love all that yellow! Don't you love all that yellow? I love all that yellow! Decals are from Third Group sheet 48-008, and paint is ModelMaster enamel. You can see the Peil Gerat installation pretty well in this photo. It was scratch-built from a piece of card stock and the gun camera fairing from a 1/32nd scale Hasegawa P-40E. Somebody probably makes one as aftermarket but I didn't have it when I built the model (or now either, for that matter!).

An interpretation of the light-colored blotching seen in the photos of this aircraft. Speculation is that it was either light blue or light gray; I used Helgrau 65 because there was already so much gray on the airframe. Is it correct? I don't know, but I don't think anybody else knows for sure either and it seems to match the tonal values in the black and white photos pretty well. Besides the blue, all the other blotching on this model was based on the 3 or 4 photos I had available of the real thing at the time it was built. With any luck it's reasonably close to being correct. That's part of the fun of modeling the Luftwaffe, you know...

At this point in time I have to wonder if you really wanted to see what the opposite side of the model looked like, but I wanted to show it to you so here it is. Not much different, huh? As a personal note, I tend to underweather most of my models on the theory that too much grunge makes them look bad.

A parting photo that shows what a thin coat of yellow I apply to these things. A lot of the yellow markings used by the Luftwaffe were temporary in nature and pertained to specific campaigns or operations, while even the more permanent ID markings were applied directly over existing paint. A fairly thin application of the yellow (or white, or whatever) allows some of the original camouflage to come through, which I like. If you decide you don't happen to like it, you might not want to do it. Choices, choices...

Be good to your neighbor and we'll see you next week.
phil

The Zipper in The Nav

Anybody who knows me well knows I've got a thing for the Lockheed F-104. My dad gave me a primordial Revell Starfighter kit for Christmas one year (along with the other jets in Revell's "Century Series" gift set) and that planted the seed. A little later, in 1959 to be exact, a flight of F-104As (probably out of Webb AFB, but they could've been from Mars that day) howled their way over our playground at Sheppard AFB during afternoon recess. I'm here to tell you right here and right now that nothing, and I mean nothing, sounds like an F-104 at low speed with the blown flaps and slats in action. It's a primal sound that I may well take to the grave; there's just nothing like it. Talk about leaving an impression on a little kid!

Anyway, so much for why I love the Zipper. Everybody knows all about them, right? They were useless because they used too much gas, didn't have much in the way of weaponry, couldn't turn, didn't have a decent radar, had a killer (literally) ejection seat, and the list goes on and on. All those things are common knowledge and, to one extent or another, all of them are wrong. Take that range thing, for example. The Zip had a greater unrefueled range than the F-4 based on internal fuel only, and presuming the '104 driver could stay out of afterburner after takeoff. The early models were slim on weaponry, it's true, but the advent of the F-104G substantially changed that scenario, and the Canadians operated their CF-104s in the tactical nuclear strike role for years in Northern Europe (and thankfully for all concerned never had to actually use the aircraft in anger). The G also improved the radar and avionics suite beyond recognition, thus adressing that particular bugaboo. The airplane could out-turn almost anything at the supersonic speeds it was originally designed to fight at; that particular capability was a mistake on the part of the designers, but in that one, design-specific environment the F-104 was a world-beater. The downward-firing seat was replaced early in the airplane's production, after the death of a number of pilots proved the notion of a downward-firing seat to be a truly Bad Idea, paticularly when viewed from the perspective that most F-104 accidents occured while the aircraft was low and slow. At the end of the day, though, and with or without qualifiers or apologies, the F-104 was the wrong airplane for the United States Air Force of the day. Lockheed's later development of the airframe, Project Lancer, might have provided the blue suiters with the right airplane but that program was stillborn, an apparent victim of the politics of the day, so we'll never know.

One thing the F-104 could do, though, and could do in spades, was go very fast, which brings us to the purpose of this piece. In the mid-1950s the United States Navy was hip-deep in the development of supersonic fighters for the Fleet, and it went without question that those aircraft would all carry the then-new AIM-9 series of air-to-air missles. Both the F8U Crusader and F4H Phantom II were slated to use the "Sidewinder", but neither airframe was quite ready for service use and the Navy needed a platform with which to acquire experience with supersonic AIM-9 operations. That requirement led directly to the F-104 which had the speed, was already configured for AIM-9 use (with one missile on each wingtip in the air defense role), and was available for test use since it was proving to be a marginal platform for its intended role as an Air Force air superiority fighter and interceptor.

That's how the Navy came to operate the F-104. In 1959 the Air Force bailed a YF-104A (55-2956) and two F-104As (56-0740 and 56-0757) to the Navy Weapons Test Center at China Lake. The aircraft were crewed by USAF pilots on TDY from the 83rd FIS, since they were already trained on the airframe and weapons delivery and were, in theory at least, familiar with the airplane's quirks and coffin corners. Most of the testing took place during 1960 and 1961. Of the three aircraft, only the YF-104A survived the test program (and later became a QF-104A drone); 56-0740 crashed to destruction on 22 September 1960, followed in short order by 56-0757 on 7 April 1961.

The loss of two-thirds of the test force in accidents was perhaps indicative of the service career of the early F-104s, but the program was a success in that the Navy was able to obtain the first-hand data they required for high-Mach operations with the AIM-9. The Starfighter experience made things a little easier when first the F8U, and then the F-4H, were introduced to the Fleet.

The photographs you see before you are all of the aircraft assigned to the test program. All still carry their Air Force serial numbers, but note that they've been reconfigured to reflect Navy practice of the era (including a BuNo presentation on the rear fuselage in the case of 0740, and probably the other two as well). Paint is standard for the F-104A right down to the white upper wing surfaces, but with certain anomalies; note the ejection seat panel on 0740 and the way the fuselage stripe on 0757 abutts the painted panel in front of it. Note that the photography only documents the two F-104As; to date I've been unable to locate an operational photograph of 55-2956 as bailed to the Navy. All photographs were supplied by the NWTC, and their kindness is gratefully acknowledged.

As for modeling, my personal choice of a kit would be the recent Hasegawa 1/48th scale offering, although I'd fill in every one of those "rivets" that they chose to sprinkle liberally all over the model. Said rivets may well prove to be one of the great mysteries of our time, since the real aircraft isn't covered with golf ball-sized divots, which is about how things work out in scale. Just when you thought you'd gotten away from that whole putty and sand thing! I'd also be careful not to accidentally push those tiny position indicator lights into the fuselage during sanding (if you've got the kit you know what I'm talking about).

At any rate, the Navy's sojourn with the Zipper gives us the opportunity to build a unique model of a really spiffy airplane. You can't ask for more than that.

So Where Are The Drawings?

Nobody's asked, but sooner or later they will; where are all those drawings that made the original Replica in Scale such a neat publication? Well, folks, the truth is that I was the modeler, the editor, the primary writer, re-writer, and ghost writer, and caption writer too, but never the artist. Bottom line, no drawings this time around. On the other hand I do have a fairly extensive photo library that will be shared as we go along. Let's hope that will suffice, at least for a while.

So, howsabout we build something when we convene again? Sounds like a deal to me!

See you next time,
phil