Starfighter at 100th Anniversary of the Aeronautica Militare

This week it was 69 years ago that the prototype of the Lockheed Starfighter made its first flight. On 4 March 1954, Lockheed XF-104 53-7786, buzz code FG-786 (c/n 083-1001) took to the skies for the first time, flown by Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier.

On 26 February 1958, the production fighter was activated by the USAF. In total 2578 examples of the legendary fighter were produced, which were used by the USAF and many air forces of their Allies. The last operational military F-104 was retired from Italian service in 2004.

But even 69 years after the first flight of the prototype, there are still Starfighters in operational, albeit civil, use. A company called Starfighter Aerospace Inc. operates a fleet of former Canadian and Italian F-104s from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

These are used for a variety of tasks: captive carry of payloads and test articles, microgravity experiments, supersonic and hypersonic RDT&E, spaceflight hardware testing/qualification, suborbital spaceflight simulation, air-launch of microsatellites, human factors and flight physiology research, jet warbird type training and familiarization for pilots, avionics testing/qualification, flight suit testing and qualification, sponsored video production, and adversary air training support. A nice video on the operations of Starfighter Aerospace can be found at: https://youtu.be/pnXMS93RnYM

The good news is that Starfighter Aerospace has accepted an invitation to join the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Aeronautica Militare (Italian Air Force, ItAF) this year. The centenary of Italian military aviation will be celebrated during the weekend of 16 to 18 June 2023 with an air show at Pratica di Mare. Initially there was the news that they planned to send two Lockheed F-104 Starfighters to Italy. But it has now become clear that there will be only ONE (former Italian) 'Zipper'.  This is without any doubt the result of the warm contacts between the Italians and Starfighter Aerospace, which operates four former Italian F-104s.

Starfighter Aerospace F-104 fleet:

Photo by Fred Willemsen via AirHistory.net