AVIATION: Gee-Whizzer

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Lockheed Aircraft Co. last week took some of the wraps off its new entry in the lightweight jet plane race. Called the XF-104 by the Air Force and the "Gee-Whizzer" by Lockheed, the new ship is a small, relatively simple day fighter designed to win local air superiority over the battlefield. Its weight is only about 14,000 Ibs. combat-loaded v. 18,000 for North American's F-86D, but it packs a hefty Curtiss-Wright J-65 engine, blasting out more than 7,200 Ibs. of thrust. The speed is secret. Officially, the Air Force will say only that the XF-104 is supersonic in level flight.

Unlike Douglas' new A4D attack bomber, which was announced as soon as it rolled out (TIME, June 14), Lockheed's new bantam has been flying secretly since February, was in the air exactly one year after the prototype contract was signed. Though Lockheed says that the plane can be produced 2½ times as fast, at half the cost of North American's F-100, Lockheed scouts the idea that it is either underarmed or stripped down. Because of new rockets, each of which packs the killing power of half a dozen World War II machine guns, the designers have been able to save weight on heavy gun mounts, guns and ammunition. But Lockheed has refused to tamper either with safety gadgets or instruments, has left them all in. Says Clarence L. Johnson, chief engineer at Lockheed's California Division: "This is still a highly complex airplane. You simply don't fly around at 40,000 feet at those kinds of speeds just by throwing a saddle over the thing and riding it. But what we have done is bring an end to the trend toward constantly bigger, constantly more complicated, constantly more expensive airplanes."