Looking like a giant’s toy that has been left ready to launch, the Spirit of Burbank F-104 Starfighter stands at nearly 55 feet in length and has a wingspan of 21.9 feet, yet its story is often unknown to the countless commuters who drive past it every day on Olive Avenue.
Tucked away in a corner of the George Izay Park, this is one of the around 2,580 from the production run, specifically the two-place F-104D version, which was mainly used for transition training of new pilots for U.S. Tactical Air Command.
Lockheed Corporation was formed in California in the early 1900s and relocated to Burbank in 1934. The F-104 was created in 1954 by Clarence “Kelly” Johnson and his Advanced Development Projects engineering unit—most famously known as the “Skunk Works”—at the Lockheed Aircraft Company in Burbank. As the world’s first Mach 2 production jet (traveling at twice the speed of sound), the F-104 re-wrote the record books for speed, altitude and time-to-climb.
Over the following years the West German, Netherlands, Belgian and Italian air forces required new aircraft for a new NATO weapons system, and the F-104 ended up being built in those countries—and Canada and Japan—over their lifetime of some 20 different models.
They were used by NASA for high-speed and altitude flight research as well, and utilized by the military in several other countries including Spain, Norway and Taiwan.
Johnson received the Collier Trophy in 1959 from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics for his design, and by the end of production in 1984, the F-104 was still in service with the air forces of 12 countries. On that 30th anniversary, the then-mayor of Burbank wanted to honor one of the city’s longtime employers, George Izay, a veteran of the Parks and Recreation Department. He suggested this Starfighter jet monument to mark the renaming of the park in Izay’s honor.
As impressive as it might seem to many, local city officials have often been angry at the cost of maintenance, since the Air Force requires annual reports about its condition, and there’s still debate about whether the city paid $25,000 for the plane, or, as official always insist, that Lockheed were happy to donate it.
