Well, troops, I flew both the F102A (1500 hours) and the F104A (730
hours). Both could hack the mission. The USAF brass didn't like the
F104 because it couldn't work in thick clouds. (Thin clouds, okay). The
104 was stationed at Homestead Florida because of Cuba's 125 MiG 21s
down there. As for the two birds being 'safe', that's a relative term.
I lost one (1) friend in the 102 in 6 years and I lost 5 in the 3 1/2
years i was in the 319th FIS flying the 104. Like Ed, I have lost many
more friends than those mentioned since I spent most of my 22 years
flying fighters in fighter squadrons. Some of the guys were lost in
peacetime, others in Vietnam. Now as far as GWB goes the 102 was an
honest airplane, having only one weird kink - it could develop a
hellacious rate of sink slow and nose-high that could only be
alleviated by diving for speed since even full afterburner could be
insufficient to break the rate of descent. Do this under say 2000 AGL
and you were in deep serious. I flew the Deuce while at Kansas city and
at Thule. We lost one guy at KC. On rotation his flashlight slid off
teh glareshiekld and fell into the stick well forward of the stick.
(The well mantling was missing.) He couldn't get the stick forward and
the bird nosed up, losing speed rapidly. He ejected but the Deuce never
ever had a zerozero seat and he hit the ground with a partially
deployed chute and was killed by impact. I know of one guy the TANG
lost in a Deuce back in the early 70s, ISTR. Weird accident. He was
flying with the lap belt loose (a lot of guys did this so they could
look around better) and hit jet wash coming up initial. He was bounced
up, the stick moved sharply, the survival kit he was sitting upon
popped out and jammed the stick forward and that was all she wrote. The
Zipper, OTH, was also an honest airplane; it told you what was going
on. You had to know its good and bad points and be ready to act now now
now. You also had to know when to quit trying to save the bird; I lost
two friends at once because they tried to dead-stick a two seater heavy
on fuel and hit hard and broke up. One friend died because his canopy
came open on takeoff and the pubs, etc, lunched the engine. One died
because his fuel gauge was reading 600 pounds too high and the engine
quit on short final. The resuklting fire was about 2 feet in diameter.
Another, we think, was an oxygen problem. He went in, without a word
about trouble, from 48,000 and 1.7M. Another had a split flap on
downwind and went right in upside down. Lost a friend in an F4 when the
outer wing panel broke off doing a max performance reversal. Yet
another backseater I'd flown combat with when the aft canopy came off
during an ACM go and he was yanked out of his seat at .95M when his
chute bloomed in the airstream. Lost a very close friend in a 105 at
McConnell on a low-level bomb pass when the fins came off lead's
hi-drag and hit his airplane at speed. I worked with the DCANG in the
late 70s; they lost a pilot when his 105 lost a wing in the pitch-out.
Two more (separate accidents) went into the water off Okinawa at night.
Another pressed his dive bomb pass and hit the ground right after his
bombs, again at night. SAMs and flak got a couple dozen. Not too much
flak or missiles on the Interstate, are there . . . Of course, we all
faced the same problem driving - high spirits, booze and idiots sharing
the road. The guy I flew one of my most memorable missions with was
erased by a French semi wiping out his VW van; killed him and his wife.
The old USAF joke is in my favor - I logged about 5000 hours in
fighters with 150 'counter' missions and lived to collect my retainer
pay. I could take some time out, starting with the guy killed in a T33
in AvCadets (Homer Hess) and list all the names I can recall - but just
read 'The Right Stuff' and see what Tom Wolfe found out. And Ed's right
- cowards can and have flown fighters - but they're not fighter pilots
and never will be. There were a couple of these guys during Vietnam -
just couldn't bring themselves to go over there and get shot at 'with
intent'. The one I couldn't understand at all was the Buff pilot who
was ready to nuke a couple million people but had strong reservations
about bombing the North Vietnamese with iron bombs. Guess he privately
felt he was never going to have to do his 'deterrent' mission and was
happy with the peacetime routine. So - why did we do it? Hard to
explain. You'd have to ride in one to see why, and maybe even then you
wouldn't understand it, unless you enjoy fast horses, fast bikes, fast
cars and fast women more than playing it safe.
Walt BJ