I think the one thing I took away from this movie is that the only aircraft the USAF had in 1964 was the F-104, KC-135, and the helicopter with the counter-rotating rotors.
They obviously used up every inch of stock footage they could get their hands on when they made this movie, so that has to be the answer!
The USAF actually never made significant use of the F-104. It was never maneuverable or forgiving enough to make a good dogfighter. It also had engine problems early on (alluded to dismissively in the movie) and had a very high crash rate. In fact, the story of "Lockheed's 104" is actually pretty scandalous... Lockheed was eventually convicted of bribing our allies' ministers and even one European king into buying surplus F-104s instead of competing aircraft. Plenty of pilots lost their lives as a result, especially in Germany. Eventually, these client nations figured out that the F-104, while not a fighter, was passable as a delivery platform for nuclear weapons. After all, it is basically a missile with a cockpit and a fancy ejection seat.
I have always assumed that this movie was part of Lockheed's heavy-handed attempt to get people to support USAF purchases of the F-104.
The F-104 may have been a widowmaker, but damned if it wasn’t one of the most beautiful aircraft, military or civilian, ever built. One wonders how it was able to fly at all with those tiny wings.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
wait a sec ... you skipped over some thinking in my opinion.
Did you just compare beauty (in a freaking bird) with stability? You should have been dead years ago due to evolution theory, poeple as stupid as you usually don't live this long.
Would you enter a beautiful ship or plane merely because it's beautiful? I reckon you would.
One DOES wonder how it was able to fly, and I can tell you this, it DOES NOT fly.
Keeping your altitude because you have a jet engine is NOT flying.
Even a 747 can technically fly on 1 out of 4 engines; the 104 had one.
The worst airfighter ever, and still some turd has to defend it's existence? Grow up please.
@ eyoak:
WELL! I simply remarked that the F-104 was an esthetically pleasing aircraft (while acknowledging its poor safety record). To quote Monty Python, I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!
The Concorde also had its share of major problems, like guzzling fuel, creating a sonic boom that restricted supersonic flight to over-water routes, and being too expensive to operate without government subsidies. And it was also one of the most damn gorgeous aircraft ever designed.
And, hyperbole aside, you know perfectly well that the F-104 did get aerodynamic lift from its undersized wings; therefore technically it flew.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
Fair enough, it was a nice looking pieca widowmaker, i'll give u that sadly.
I invented a very nice looking helicopter that flies like the 104, do you want a ride from the Spanish Inquisition Airways?
Comparing the 104 to a commercial airliner makes no sense, and makes you look stupid.
Yeah the F16 uses alot of fuel, but compared to a regular 747, it doesn't have the economy 'Weight vs Fuel advantage', cuz it's a f*bleep FIGHTER plane.
The smaller the wings, the less change your plane is gonna break while making manouvres, it has crap to do with lift. The wings carry the plane, the speed and wing size determines how fast you gotta go for your wings to carry you!
quote "you know perfectly well that the F-104 did get aerodynamic lift from its undersized wings"
you can launch (is that flying?) a toothpick into the sun without wings if you have enough propulsion (and steering abilities)
"you can launch a toothpick into the sun without wings if you have enough propulsion"
I recall seeing photos of an F-104 being launched like a rocket at a ~45 +/- 10 degree angle by a (I assume a solid fuel) booster rocket underneath it. That system may have been just an R&D thing, but it lends credence to the notion that it needed an excessively long runway (of which there were few available, thus limiting the deployment of 104's around the world) to take off like a plane.
FYI, hurling puerile insults does not make a convincing argument. I'd say you're the one who needs to grow up junior, and collect a few gray cells along the way while your at it.
sharejust my thoughts +1
shareI'm not sure that's stock footage. It looks like the Air Force gave the filmmakers access to a base and planes (that's why you get snazzy shots of the planes taxiing over the cameras; I can't imagine the DoD shooting stuff like that for promo purposes), but in return they probably demanded that they not be presented in a bad light. Unfortunately, that sucked any chance for drama out of the project, and we ended up with something that they hoped would be a great recruitment film, but turned out to be pretty boring and lifeless. And short. So to pad the film out to feature length, refueling, refueling, refueling...
shareMaybe only those three aircraft made it to the screen in this stinker, but the USAF had a HUGE variety of craft in 1964. The late 50s/early 60's was probably the time of the most varied fleet the USA ever operated.
There were B-47, supersonic B-58 Hustler, and B-52 bombers. As for fighters, the F-4 Phantom had just come out 3 years earlier, the Century Series fighters were going strong, and let's not forget the F8 Crusader. The F-86 Sabrejet was still flying in ground attack versions, and with the Air Guard. The A-6 Intruder had just hit the scene the year before.
And to end the year with a mach 3+ bang, the SR-71 made its first flight in December '64.
"I'm... not familiar with the type of thing I'm seeing."
When I was working in the aerospace industry in the mid 1980's someone put together two graphs:
a) one showing the number of different fighter jets in the US inventory vs. time (year) from 1945 to the present
b) the other showing the normalized (adjusted for inflation) cost of the average US fighter jet vs. time (year) from 1945 to the present
The graphs then showed the extrapolated projection into the future, and it predicted that by 2012, there would be only ONE TYPE of fighter in the US inventory. Well, we still have a number of planes in inventory, but there is in fact only ONE fighter under DEVELOPMENT for both USAF & USN: the JSF. So, they kind of got it right.
The other projection they made is that by 2050 or so, the cost of ONE COPY of a US fighter plane would equal the entire federal budget! i.e., we could buy one plane, but spend money on nothing else. I'm more doubtful that that will come true, but I find it interesting that they kind of got their first prediction right.
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