The "Lawn-dart". My kind of humor.
At least some notorious bavarian politician had full pockets after the deal was sealed...
But to be fair to Lockheed, it was partially not their fault. Biilions for the deal, but ZILCH for infrastructure - the german air force didn´t even built shelters! That´s right, they parked those delicate machines right outside on the tarmac, day and night, in sunshine, rain and snow...
And they forbid pilots to put tarps over at least the cockpit section, because that looked to "makeshift"...
Over a third of the fleet crashed, leaving over 100 pilots dead, including the son of the then president of the Bundestag, Kai Uwe von Hassel, who also happened to be the german secretary of defense, when the first Starfighters turned into Lawndarts.
Oh, and that crash finally helped the widows to sue Lockheed with the help of star-lawyer Melvin Belli; before that, the german establishment did their "very best" to cover all that sh*t up. Now they had a "prominent" voice.
Only "good" thing that came out of it was the start of the "F-104-Replacement-Group"-program, when finally even the politicians came to the conclusion/were persuaded that a tailor-made european fighter plane could/would be a smart solution.
See Tornado. Apart from the usual budget-overruns i never heard a pilot complaining over that machine.