The Horrific Reason Germany's Air Force Called the F-104 Starfighter “Widow Maker”
The Starfighter got off to a very bad start when, in Jun. 1962, four F-104s were practicing for the type’s “introduction-into-service” display and crashed in formation, killing all four pilots.
With almost 300 days of sunshine a year, Luke Air Force Base (AFB) in Phoenix, Arizona, was an excellent place to train and, given that German pilots could avoid the European bad weather, the airfield was chosen by the country to train its future F-104 drivers. But when the pilots returned to the harsh German weather, problems immediately arose.
The issues were in two areas.
First, the speeds that the F-104 had to fly for approach and landing very high – much higher than the earlier jets – and went very fast, especially for an inexperienced pilot flying in seriously bad weather.
Second, since the Luftwaffe Starfighters’ had to perform the low-level high-speed attack mission and in those kind of sorties the aircraft was very sensitive to control-input and extremely unforgiving to pilot error.
The result was a horrific number of accidents. In fact 61 German F-104s had crashed, with a loss of 35 pilots by mid-1966.
Gen. Wernher Panitzki, the then Commander of the Luftwaffe, was forced to resign when he said that the Starfighter purchase was politically motivated. His successor was the Luftwaffe World War II-ace Lt. Gen. Johannes Steinhoff, who, as told by Michel, immediately grounded the F-104Gs, at least partially (and wisely) to install a new ejection seat.
To add to the Starfighters’ problems, it was learned that, in fact, Lockheed had bribed officials in Germany and other countries in the process of selling the F-104, though the German Starfighter purchase documents had been destroyed in 1962 by the Ministry of Defence.
However the crashes continued despite a variety of fixes. Between 15 and 20 German 104s crashed every year between 1968 and 1972 and continued at a rate of about 10 F-104s per year until it was replaced.
The final tally was the loss of 292 of the 916 Starfighters and the death of 115 pilots.
