Appaling thing about this:

These are F-104G ,purchased by west germany from the US ,over the course of almost a decade the german government was politically pressured by the US to buy 912 of these aircraft, which were critically flawed for use in europe.

Indeed, this plane was created as a daylight interceptor design for good weather only and very long landing strip (the landing speed is way higher than the other jets if the time because of the small wingspan , so the plane stalls quickly at low speed) .adding to that was the extremely limited fuel supply (the wings were too thing to hold fuel tanks like in every other aircrafts) which meant carrying up to four external tanks, reducing heavily the aerodynamic profile of the jet.

These planes were designed in arizona, where it almost never rains , and the foreign pilots were also trained there, with huge spaces . Demonstrating great performance there. Once in europe, with a completely different weather pattern and huge difference in high altitude low altitude air pressure, the plane became extremely tricky to pilot, leading to the death of 115 pilots. The germans named it “widowmaker” because of this

The first man to denounce the fact that lockheed and more generally the US department if defence pressured him and the government to buy the F104 was the commander of the west german air force ,Wernher Panitzki. He was forced to resign his commission.

The ministry of defence destroyed the purchase documents after that.

292 of the 912 jets crashed either on landing or due to rainy weather, killing 115 pilots between 1962 and 1991. Just because the US wanted to make money