GERMAN STARFIGHTER ROW

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31018, 25 March 1966, Page 13

GERMAN STARFIGHTER ROW

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copt/riflht) BONN, March 24. The West German Cabinet faces angry attacks in Parliament today over the soaring crash-rate of Ameri-can-designed Starfighter jets flown by the West German Air Force. In a special debate the Opposition Social Democratic Party will quiz the Government on why the Luftwaffe has lost 51 of the ultramodern planes and 27 pilots since 1961. The Cost to German taxpayers, at some 6,000,000 marks a plane, is estimated at more than 306 million marks (about £27 million) in material alone. Several million people are expected to tune in to direct television coverage of the debate, in which the centre of criticism will be the Defence Minister, Mr Kaiuwe von Hassel. The Social Democrats, who will field some of their top defence experts in the debate, say they have a heavily incriminating case against the Defence Minister, but have kept this a closely guarded secret. A party spokesman said

last night: “We have concrete evidence that the Defence Minister has told untruths to the Parliamentary Defence Committee or that he kept silent about important facts on the Starfighter’s operational state.”

The Minister was one of many top officials who testified for the committee’s recent investigation of the Starfighter affair. The spokesman said it was believed the Opposition charges were grave enough to force West German Chancellor Erhard himself to join today’s debate. Dr. Erhard today was voted with a bigger majority than expected, to lead the party. The sleek, silver-grey jets built under licence in Germany, are the key to West

German defence, reaching twice the speed of sound the planes are technically almost the last step before rocketry.

But critics assert that West Germany has overloaded the needle-nosed machine with additional and highly complex equipment to adapt it to European conditions and specific German requirements.

Tests will shortly begin under a U.S.-German scheme to further streamline the plane—this time with an auxiliary booster rocket enabling the plane to take off rocket-style from a small pad. A “Starfighter report” completed by the Defence Committee this week said there were no typical symptoms for Starfighter crashes. But it admitted that Bonn’s whole fleet of about 650 Starfighters was susceptible to crashes because of shortage of qualified maintenance staff, pilots lacking in experience, pilot error and certain mechanical and structural failures.