COBI Lockheed F-104 Starfighter Set 5907

COBI's Lockheed F-104 Starfighter is a 1:48 model built from 428 blocks, 33 cm long, produced with the Deutsches Marinemuseum and modelled on a Luftwaffe aircraft of Jagdbombergeschwader 33 at Büchel — one of 210 built under licence in Germany by Messerschmitt, Dornier, Heinkel and SIAT, and now an exhibit at the museum. The wheels move, the cockpit opens, and a display stand with a transparent stem and a nameplate is included.

The ejection seat fired downwards

The Starfighter's tailplane is mounted on top of the fin, directly in the path of anything leaving the cockpit upward. So the earliest seats fired the pilot down, through a hatch in the floor.

That works at altitude. Below a few hundred metres there is not enough height for the parachute, and a pilot who loses an engine on approach — which happened — had no usable escape. Upward seats were fitted later, but the original arrangement is one of the reasons the type's reputation was what it was.

Germany bought 916 and lost 292 in accidents with 116 pilots killed. The press called it the Witwenmacher.

The bribes

There is a second reason the F-104 is remembered, and it is not about flying.

In the 1970s American investigations established that Lockheed had paid large bribes to officials and politicians in several countries to secure Starfighter orders. The consequences were extraordinary: a prime minister of Japan was arrested, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was found to have taken money and stripped of his military posts, and the scandal ran through West German and Italian politics for years.

It also produced a lasting result. The United States passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1977, which made it a crime for American companies to bribe foreign officials — the first law of its kind anywhere, and the model for those that followed.

In the COBI range

Set 2426 is the F-104 in Vietnam-era USAF markings at the same scale.

Specifications

Pieces: 428 · Scale: 1:48 · With the Deutsches Marinemuseum · Display stand and nameplate
Model dimensions: 33 × 16.5 × 9.5 cm (13.0 × 6.5 × 3.7 in), 14 cm base