>>64264841
The f104 wasn't designed as a pure interceptor, it was designed as an air superiority fighter by kelly johnson while getting imputs from expert korean war pilots flying f86's, after the lockheed f-80 somewhat embarassed itself, that told him what mattered for fighting migs was climbing quickly, flying fast and having a good gun with high rate of fire - and to quote Francis Gabreski "I'd rather sight with a piece of chewing gum stuck on the windscreen" and told Johnson that radar "was a waste of time".
And that's what the f104a turned out to be, the smallest plane they could design around the engine and m61 gun, with a minimal range finding radar and wingtip mounted infrared missiles - not entirely different from the f-16 design brief, if you think about it. And like the f-16, after the very basic initial design it kept getting fatter with new avionics and ground attack munitions as time went on. It was only designated as an interceptor after the f102 ran into serious development issues forcing the f104 to be adopted as an interim solution, and dropped in the role once the 102 and 106 were up to speed.
The problem with the f104 is that it was ONLY designed with input from expert pilots, and ended up entirely unforgiving for newbie pilots between it's very high landing speeds, strictly limited AoA, and dependence on manually controlled flaps for maneuvering. And before the f102 showed how you could use area rule to compensate for large wings, very high wing loading was the only way to go fast - which is why the f105 also has very large wing loading, despite being designed as a bomber.
The area rule was quantifed so late in the f105's development that they decided it would be easier to implementing it by widening the ends of the fuselage instead of narrowing the wing root.
