BTW… Mirage III was not considered. The choise was on Super Tiger or F-104. The responsible Luftwaffe general opted for the Super Tiger but Lockheed intervened with a lot of money for certain politicians…

In the end, F-104G performed very well on tree top level missions for these days, but was a very unsafe aircraft.The Mirage was droped because with it’s big wing performed bad in tree top level.

Tornado performed much better in tree top level than any other fighter, better than F-16 and other contemporary jets. It was the right choice for that job in these days.