The Starfighter is a ‘hot ship’ and has to be flown every inch of the way. In bad weather, or with an on-board emergency situation, it is a real handful to cope with. The USAF had recognised this and required pilots assigned to the Starfighter to have at least 1,500 flight hours’ experience. The new breed of German military pilots had been trained in the blue skies environment of Texas, then returned to Europe and its fickle weather with about 400 hours total flying time. To put such raw pilots into a Starfighter was asking for trouble, especially as the German F-104G version had become a multi-mission aeroplane, weighing 2,000lb more than the standard F-104. Trouble they got in plenty.

-Captain Eric Brown from "Wings on my sleeve"

The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter is an American single-engine, supersonic interceptor which was extensively deployed as a fighter-bomber during the Cold War. 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 United States.

• Operators of the F-104

  • Belgium 🇧🇪
  • Canada 🇨🇦
  • Denmark 🇩🇰
  • Germany 🇩🇪
  • Greece 🇬🇷
  • Italy 🇮🇹
  • Japan 🇯🇵
  • Jordan 🇯🇴
  • Netherlands 🇳🇱
  • Norway 🇳🇴
  • Pakistan 🇵🇰
  • Spain 🇪🇸
  • Taiwan 🇹🇼
  • Turkey 🇹🇷
  • And lastly, of course, the USAF 🇺🇸

• Not the best F-104 out here in Simpleplanes, but I just really like the Starfighter for some reason recently. While flying may not be the best experience for the pilots who have flown on them, for me, it's the design of it looking like a futuristic aircraft and the impressive performance for it's time made me fall in love with the F-104 haha.

Controls:

The controls on this thing is quite heavy so fly with caution
especially at lower speeds
Take off speed: Throttle 80~89% (91~96% with afterburner) then lift nose at around 300km/h
(around 161 kts)
Landing speed: 320~380 km/h (172~205 kts)

VTOL: Flaps
Trim: Spoilers
AG1: Engine ON/OFF
AG2: Missiles
AG3: Guns
AG4: Rockets
(DONT FORGET TO SET THEIR CORRESPONDING ACTIVATORS, AG2,AG3 etc..)
(not really necessary btw, just put pylons and weapons on it and its all good, the activators are for the switch in the cockpit for aesthetic purposes but hey they still work)
AG5: Eject
AG6: Drag chute (Use after touchdown only)

Safe flights!

Special thanks to @Ku for the RWR!

Picture by:SSGT Terry Smith

Picture by: Y.Toda

Picture by: Unknown

Picture by: Mike Freer

Crappy art by: me