You mean, would the F-104 repeat the glorious service history of the IAF MiG-23? I don’t think the starfighter was that bad!
but it was ! :dev2:
how many mig-21 and derivatives are flying in the world today ? how many starfighters ?
how many air forces of major military powers fly mig-21 family aircraft ?
I rest my case.
How old are your newest MiG-21s?
Italy built Starfighters with new radars & BVRAAMs (Sparrow, later replaced by Aspide) from the late 1960s until well into the 1970s. With further upgrades, some remained in service until 2004. Turkey bought some new in the 1970s.
If India had kept building upgraded F-104s in the same way it did Gnats, MiG-21s & Jaguars, I can imagine it still having some in service.
I can’t ; imagine upgraded starfighters in IAF i.e.
the newest mig-21bis in IAF is 25 years old. I don’t think the F-104 would have survived as long, IOW India could not have kept upgrading starfighters. even PAF, no slouch at maintaining old aircraft types retired the type in mid 70’s. heck, even few years back they still flew some F-6.
didn’t they switch to mig-21’s in the form of F-7’s ? what more proof do you want ? :diablo:
the jaguar, barring the engine power and lack of FBW, is still up to date in the modern battlefield and a much more safer aircraft than the F104 was.
The IAF’s ‘second Generation’ MiG-21s are probably younger than the USAF’s ‘fourth Generation’ F-15C.
the mig-21bis is considered 3rd generation and it is about the same age as the F15C.
F-104 or MiG-21 – same number of coffins.
Other users didn’t have the same accident rate as the Luftwaffe & RCAF in the 1960s, & there was a lot more to it than being dangerous to fly, though the handling characteristics probably did account for many crashes. Engine & other faults & maintenance failings accounted for a lot of the early ones.
The initial ejector seat was crap, as well. Pilot survival rates improved greatly when it was replaced.
BTW, weren’t a lot of the IAF MiG-21 crashes put down to new pilots having too difficult a transition from relatively low performance trainers to the MiG-21? The Luftwaffe had a very similar problem, supposedly exacerbated by transition from training in benign weather conditions in Arizona. MiG-21s flown by the same pilots with the same amount of training in the same conditions (low-level in Central & NW Europe) would probably have had similar numbers of crashes due to pilot error.
I will deal with these two points together since they are similar. sunny italy, with much better weather than canada or germany coupled with the advantage of flying more modern upgraded starfighters :
Up to 1997, Italy had lost 137 (38%) of its F-104s in 928,000 flying hours (14.7 aircraft every 100,000 hours
while we do not have total service life figures for IAF mig-21’s, we do have IAF fighter attrition rates in late 90’s (worst in recent years) and 70’s, at which time the Mig-21 formed the bulk of the fleet.
both are lower than this figure.
1998. This means that the loss rate for Indian fighters was 0.45 per 10,000 hours. OR 4.5 per 100,000 hours
Briefly, IAF attrition rates in the 1990s are half of they were in the 1960s and 1970s.
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