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@pirrer · 2026-10-15 01:13

Taiwan's air force flew the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter for 38 years, from 1960 to 1998. That is more than twice as long as the U.S. Air Force, including the Air National Guard, kept it in service. The cost is itemized in the air force's own journal: 114 aircraft destroyed and 62 pilots killed or missing. The authors sort the losses into 51 mechanical, 50 human and 13 with no known cause. West Germany's F-104 became known as the "Widowmaker." Divide the 114 destroyed by the journal's total of 238 aircraft and Taiwan's figure comes to nearly 48%; West Germany's is about 32%. The comparison is rough: different hours, missions, decades, and ways of counting, and Taiwan's 238 includes spare-parts airframes and is itself inconsistent. Why keep flying it? After 1979, Taiwan could not buy a new generation of American fighters, so it kept the F-104 going with secondhand jets retired by West Germany, Japan, and Denmark; Belgian airframes went mainly to spare parts. The F-16s and Mirage 2000s finally began reaching units in 1997. The video opens with silent color footage the U.S. Air Force shot at Ching Chuan Kang Air Base in 1969, now held by the U.S. National Archives.

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