Here
it is the 1st of August and I haven't updated for July yet! That's probably due
to the fact that June and July have been altogether dreary, depressing months
for me. The State Treasurer's Office has been impacted by all the brouhaha
associated with Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger's battle to pass a California
budget, while nationally, first the execrable mess Bush created with his Iraq
adventure, and now the current American Presidential campaign has been
preoccupying everyone with its endless, wearisome exchange of meaningless
political rhetoric between the two major party candidates. What a complete
formula for disillusioning anyone with a modicum of rational awareness left
intact!
On the home front, our aging male Siberian Husky
Deejay, a lifelong 'pretty boy' never known for his acute intelligence, has been
progressively losing what little wits he originally had, thanks to a sort of
doggie version of Alzheimers. He has also reached the point where he is having
trouble mererly walking and controlling his bodily functions, which induces a whole new
level of trying circumstance to the household. This has not been helped by the
fact that our younger female Siberian, who has always regarded the big doofus as
an interloper, is
now making his confused life even more troubled as she waits inside the doggie
door in ambush for him, so she can snap at his nose as he tries to come into the
house. The result of this running battle of canine personalities is enough in
itself to induce a level of tension and frustration that is unwelcome, but when
you factor in the current state budget battles, the bloody Iraqi war wind-down, the
looney tunes national presidential political campaigns, and the fact
that my new Porsche 914-6 has now been sitting in the local service garage for two
weeks (waiting for a rear brake cylinder seal--did they order it by camel-back,
I wonder?), my plate of domestic angst has
been rather full of late. I really feel as if I need a vacation...and one
as far from all the impossibly 
stupid things going on in my land of birth as
possible (this typically means a winter ski holiday in Switzerland, a Spring idyll in Hallstatt
(Austria) on the Hallstattersee, or a Fall beach party in Tahiti). Recently, it has
begun to seem as if I won't really be back in top form until pigs have been
picked up penetrating Saudi airspace on HRH Prince Abdullah's coastal Red Sea defense
radar.
As
a matter of fact, the only thing that has given me some real joy recently has
been my 'adoption' of a rather unique aircraft in our local McClellan Aviation
Foundation Museum. By 'adoption', I refer to the fact that I have become the
aircraft's 'crew chief', or rather the person who has charge of maintaining and
taking care of that particular airplane. The aircraft in reference is our
somewhat rare Lockheed F-104B Starfighter, one of only 26 such two-seat training
versions of the single seat A model Starfighter ever made. This particular
Starfighter, USAF SN 57-1303, is one of 11 Starfighters operated by NASA
at the Dryden Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, and the only two-seat B model ever
used there (they later added a couple of TF-104G models). From 1959 through 1978, NASA N819NA (57-1303) performed important
biomedical research in support of the space shuttle and X-15 programs, enabling
advances in physiological science and crew-monitoring techniques that furthered our space effort
substantially. Additionally, it was used as a chase plane for the X-15 rocket research
program and also served as a landing systems training simulator first for the
X-15 (and later still for the Space Shuttle), due to its relatively high sink rate,
substantially high landing speed, and
short stubby wings.
The Lockheed F0104 Starfighter has always been a
fascinating (and in my opinion quite beautiful) aircraft design. With its
aerodynamic shape, razor-thin, 7&1/2 foot long wings (21 foot wing span), and high performance,
the F-104 was a handful to fly, requiring excellent piloting skills and extreme
proficiency. Never a plane to forgive or overlook the slightest error in human
operator handling throughout its entire flight envelope, when flown by a
knowledgeable, capable pilot, it was (I am told) nevertheless an absolute rush
to fly! Frequently called "The missile with a man in it" by the press
and media of the 50s, I have never heard anyone in the aviation community refer
to it by that particularly fanciful description (it was always "the
104"). The Starfighter's high
wing-loading and task-loaded cockpit had always required careful operator
attention, but when the Germans adopted it in the 1970s, things became 
considerably more complicated. Much has been said about Germany's high attrition
rate among its Starfighter pilots, but in fairness, a great deal of their loss
could be blamed on a combination of several critically interrelated factors:
inadequate training, poor European weather, and radical changes made to the basic Starfighter design by Lockheed
at Germany's behest (that would allow multiple roles and the carrying of a wide
range of ordinance). Probably the worst performance characteristic of the F-104
was its relatively short range, followed by its basic unsuitability for high-G
ACM maneuvering. The 104 was designed to fly high and fast, in a straight line,
for a limited amount of time. Dogfighting was definitely not a strong
Starfighter suit.
At
any rate, the museum's 104 is in beautiful shape for its age, although the
present paint job is not an accurate one, nor is it the color scheme the
aircraft last sported as a NASA flight test workhorse. Today, having been
retired by NASA in 1979, NASA Starfighter N819NA sits quietly on the McClellan
Aviation Museum field, its Mach-Mach pointed nose facing West, as its aluminum
body vibrates in sympathy with the jet rumble of still active aircraft taking
off and landing on the nearby McClellan runways. As crew-chief for this bird, I
spend many hours with it, keeping it clean, restoring parts of it (the cockpit
is currently being refurbished, after years of UV light exposure), and at certain
moments I can't help but feel a bit anthropomorphic about it, wondering about
Eastern ideas focused on karma and musing whether or not there is really some
indefinable karmic energy in this airplane that speaks soundlessly to any who
will listen to it with more than their ears. I am sure it would tell some
marvelous tales if only it could.
Curiously enough, I seem to have had some
affinity for this particular aircraft even before I became involved with the
McClellan Aviation Foundation, long before I joined the museum's board of
directors, and in fact, from my early days of adolescence. To explain, when I
was a child of 11 or so, growing up in Kern County (CA) near Edwards AFB, my Boy
Scout troop would regularly visit the Edwards facility on certain 'open days' at that base
(Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, etc.). On such occasions, the base would put on an
airshow featuring many of the planes assigned to the Flight Test Operations
there; this Starfighter was one of them. I recall having seen this plane take
part in the airshows on a few of these open days and I even had my picture taken
standing next to its razor-like wings, when it was parked on the ramp after the
show (I still have that picture somewhere!).
About 10 years ago, I took a few pictures
of my wife dressed in some of my flightgear standing next to this plane. Imagine my surprise when I 
recently found myself asking to be
assigned to this plane as its crew-chief! It was not unlike rediscovering a
long-lost relative, although that is stretching the analogy a bit, only to find
that it is the same Starfighter I first watched arc through the skies in 1959
and 60. It impressed me terribly then, traveling above the Edwards main runway
close to Mach, at only 100 feet AGL; today it impresses me still, even though it simply sits there, like some
ancient war horse turned out to pasture in old
age that gazes placidly off into the far horizons, lost in dreams and glorious memories
of the past.
In researching the background of this aircraft,
the first thing that became apparent was that of all of the 11 Starfighters used
by NASA at the Dryden Flight Test Center, 57-1303/N819NA was the least
photographed. Since it was a two-seater, it was useful for a broader range of
flight experimentation and study than the single-seat versions; how ironic then,
that photographs of it in use are so much harder to find than those showing the
other F-104s in NASA's stable. One of its most interesting uses was as a
training aircraft for simulating high angle gliding approaches to the Edwards
main runway, quite similar to those characteristic of other high wing-loading
gliding bodies (e.g. the equally stubby-winged North American X-15 hypersonic
rocket research vehicle and later the STS shuttle craft). Pilots for both
programs learned much about the post-mission landing profiles they would need to
maintain in the cockpit of 57-1303. Another very interesting anecdotal bit of
information to come to light is the fact that this aircraft was known to at
least a few Edwards/NASA people by the curious name of "Howling
Howland". In trying to establish the verity of this, I had little luck,
although the search for corroboration of the anecdote continues. Nevertheless, I
applied some deductive logic to the proposition in the best Sherlockian
tradition and came to a surprising conclusion, as I shall relate in the
following paragraph.
Back in the late 40s and early 50s, the Edwards
AFB Test Pilot School had just been established on the newly renamed base
(formerly known as Muroc Air Base, the facility was renamed Edwards AFB in 1949
in honor of test pilot Glenn Edwards, who died in a crash of the huge and
radical Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing); "Muroc", surprisingly, was simply
"Corum" reversed, the name of the family whose pioneering ranch
acreage near Mojave had provided part of the extensive new desert base). As an
emblem of the new Test Pilot School, a popular cartoon character from Walt
Kelly's strip POGO was selected and incorporated into a cartoon drawing that
showed 'Howland Owl' riding one of the new jet-propelled Lockheed P-80 Shooting
Stars (see adjacent image). Howland Owl was a character depicted as being a
pompous, slightly stuffy, self-educated owl who despite his vast array of
knowledge, was still considerably uncertain of himself, and something of a
dilatant intellectual who perpetually stumbled over hard reality. Cratoonist
Walt Kelly, of course, was a hugely popular late 40s and early 50s cartoonist
and social observer who used the cartoon characters he drew to make
brilliant satires on controversial social issues of the McCarthy
anti-Communist era.
The second part of this anecdote involves the
engine used specifically in the F-104 Starfighter (the General Electric J-79-3,
-7, and -11 axial flow, afterburning turbojets). This engine created a very
unique and highly unusual 'howling' wail that could be produced both on the
ground and in the air. According to former Lockheed flight test engineer Jim
Upton's excellent WARBIRD TECH volume on the F-104 (ISBN 1-58007-069-8,
Specialty Press, North Branch MN, 
2003,
Volume 38), the sound resulted from the configuration of the primary and
secondary exhaust nozzles on the engine, which allowed exhaust gases to create a
sound not unlike that which is produced by blowing air across the open top of a
soda bottle. Selection of a certain throttle setting by the pilot created the
sound on demand, a wail that was unique to the Starfighter alone, among all
aircraft. Anyone who has ever been around Starfighters ramping up for flight or
coming in low over the field will well recall this strange, unearthly howl that
the Starfighter's J-79 engine created. If the sight alone of a low, fast F-104
slashing over the landscape wasn't enough to give you goose bumps, the
Starfighter's howl was!
At any rate, here were two intriguing parts of a
curious puzzle. Perhaps they are unrelated, but I like to think that
taken together, they may well provide the explanation for 57-1303's unusual
nickname, "Howling Howland". Until such a time that further
corroboration of this theory can be established, this surmise remains simply
that--an educated guess--but it could just as well be the genuine
explanation, in view of the fact that there never were too many "Howlands"
in the world, and one of the best known is in fact "Howland Owl"
of POGO fame. The hypothesis is neat, it fits, and I'd be willing to bet on
it.....however...
After many years of service in and around
Edwards, this B model Starfighter was finally retired in 1979 to the
Davis-Monthan 'boneyard' (formerly known as MASDC, now known as the Aircraft
Maintenance and Regeneration Center, or AMARC). In 1983 the decision was made to
donate the aircraft to an air museum and our own, the former McClellan AFB
Museum (now privatised), was selected to take the machine. The aircraft is in
excellent condition, with only the engine having been removed as part of the
normal demil process each retired military jet must undergo when declared
surplus to need. Two Lockheed-Stanley C-2 upward firing ejection seats remain in
the 'office', along with all instruments, controls and accessories. The canopy
glazing is in excellent condition, despite years of exposure to the merciless
rays of the sun, and the paint was refreshed by the McClellan AFB ALC crews
shortly after the aircraft was given to the museum. Unfortunately, the current
paint scheme is not entirely accurate, but that is a small failing, given the
overall excellent condition it is otherwise in. Perhaps one of these days we
shall paint it in its late blue & white NASA scheme.
One passing note of interest concerns the small
red triangular ejection warning decal that all aircraft equipped with ejection
seats feature just under their cockpit canopies. This triangular warning
originated with the earliest production F-104A Starfighter, which was originally
equipped with the notorious Stanley downward firing C-1 ejection seat. The early
downward firing seats were fitted to the Starfighter due to serious concerns the
engineers had about the ability of then current ejection guns to fire the seat
high enough to clear the tall "T-tail" of the F-104. Of course, at
that time it was felt that most emergency ejections would take place at high
speeds and high altitudes. Actual reality weighed-in catastrophically on that
concept, 
when
it was seen that due to recurrent problems with the early engines (flame-outs,
and other severe engine failures), most emergency ejections actually occurred
very close to the ground. At such moments, the protocol for emergency egress
consisted of rolling the aircraft so that it was banked at 90 or more degrees
off the horizontal plane before ejecting. This would (in theory) assure at least
a side-wards ejection, and if the pilot was lucky, a more nearly vertical
(although upside down) ejection. Unfortunately, rarely were real emergencies
congruent with these optimal procedures and the most likely result of an
ejection in the downward firing seat was the death of the pilot. A number of US
Air Force Starfighter pilots died proving this point, but it was finally the
death of ace-celebrity test pilot Ivan Kincheloe in an early F-104A that
prompted Lockheed and Stanley to reconfigure the C-1 downward firing ejection
seat into a new upwards firing model designated the C-2 seat.
But I digress, on the first downward firing seat
Starfighters, a red triangular warning decal was placed on either side of the
cockpit coaming indicating that the aircraft was fitted with a 'downward firing
seat'; the delta shaped triangle pointed downward for that reason. When the C-1
seat was reconfigured to C-2 status, with an upwards firing mode, the triangular
delta decal was left pointing downwards, but the words within the delta were
redone to state 'upward firing seat'. All subsequent aircraft have been
fitted with upwards firing ejection seats and that is the reason why the delta
points downwards, strangely, rather than upwards as one might expect. Another
little known fact of American military aviation egress history!
One
last thing concerned with Starfighters and with particular regard to this B
model we have at our museum: we have just had a new, beautifully embroidered,
full-color, professionally produced patch made up, in order to help raise money
for this aircraft's continued maintenance and upkeep (see adjacent image). The
patch shows a Starfighter superimposed on the Edwards Air Force Flight Test
Center's heraldic shield and has on the scroll (instead of 'Ad
Inexplorata') the words, "F-104B" (model type)--"MAM"
(McClellan Aviation Museum)--"57-1303" (the aircraft's USAF
serial number). Measuring a large 4.5 inches in the vertical dimension, this
patch may be obtained for a $5 contribution to the '"Howling
Howland" Maintenance and Support Fund', which has been established
for it at the museum. Those who are interested in obtaining a patch may contact
us at aeoluslifesupport@lanset.com
. They are, as stated above, US$ 5 each. There may be a few more unique
full-color embroidered Starfighter patches upcoming in the near future--one in
particular will show the Walt Kelly character "Howland Owl" riding a
Starfighter with typical Howland near-hysterical affect! These have yet to be
finalised, but details will be provided in months to come and the patches will
be available at this website, when they are ready, for about US$5 each.
And so, as July 2004 slumps to a hot, exhausted
end, and despite the continued depressing news about terrorist chaos in Iraq,
the pending presidential political run-offs (running-off at the mouth, more
like!), and the apparent predominance of human stupidity and social ignorance as
the single most influential elements affecting American daily life, thank
goodness we have beautiful toys like 57-1303 to play with, to help take our
minds off the asinine preoccupations and obsessive juvenile compulsions of
contemporary American culture. [Seriously, 57-1303 is not a toy; but an
important artifact of American aeronautical history worthy of preservation for
the edification of the public and future generations. At least my wife will rest
assured, knowing where I am spending my off-days (fondling my Starfighter, out
at the museum!). Be well, citizens!
Cheers, DocBoink--Jul 04
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