LOL, Communist propaganda. Prepare to be bombarded with links.
"procedures.
First flight of the F-104 prototype took place on February 7, 1954, and production aircraft first entered service with the USAF in January 1958. By the time the last Starfighter was built in Italy in 1978, a total of 2536 units had been constructed in this multinational program. A final question and observation on the somewhat controversial F-104: Why did the aircraft receive such wide acceptance by foreign air forces while, at the same time, it was essentially rejected by the USAF? Relatively light in weight, the aircraft offered a very high performance at a reasonable price. These were no doubt important ingredients in the formula that assured its widespread safe abroad, as was the highly aggressive and effective sales campaign mounted by the Lockheed organization. Limited payload and range, however, restricted the usefulness of' the F-104 in service with the USAF - an organization that could and did pay for exactly what it wanted. "
Source:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-104.htm
"In Luftwaffe service, the F-104G got a bad reputation because of the large number of accidents, many of them resulting in fatalities. Intensive flying operations with the Starfighter did not start in Germany until 1961, when only two crashes took place. There were seven crashes in 1962, 12 in 1964, and 28 in 1965, or more than two a month. By mid-1966, 61 German Starfighters had crashed, with a loss of 35 pilots. At the height of the crisis, the Starfighter accident rate peaked at 139 per 100,000 flying hours. As a result, the German press went into a feeding frenzy and the F-104G was given derogatory nicknames such as the "Flying Coffin" or the "Widowmaker", which brings to mind all of the flak that surrounded the Martin B-26 Marauder during World War 2. One running joke at the time was that if you waited long enough, just about every square mile of Germany would have a Starfighter crash onto it. The press left many people with the impression that there was something intrinsically wrong with the F-104G, that it was just too difficult an airplane to fly for the new and relatively inexperienced Luftwaffe pilots. The high loss rate generated a flurry of criticism of the Bonn government, some critics claiming that the entire Starfighter program had been politically-motivated and should be cancelled outright."
Source:
http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/f104_17.html
I'm not saying that every piece of military technology Lockheed Martin produce is crap. All I'm saying is that if they do produce something crap, they may still be able to sell it to someone in strange ways, pressuring governments. I admit, I have no proof for this, but I believe it is something worth investigating.
