How Odd

Strike Fighters fits in a niche market.

The time frame of the official campaigns ranges from the 1956 Suez Crisis to the 1982 Invasion of Lebanon.

SF2 is the original game and is set in a fictional Middle East where the US is lending support to one side in a conflict over oil.  Five campaigns are set here, '59, '66, '68, '72 and '75.  You can play USAF, USN and USMC forces or a mercenary.  Despite there being a sea right there, everything is land based.

SF2 Vietnam is, surprise! Vietnam with the 1965-1968 Rolling Thunder and both 1972 Linebacker campaigns.  There's USAF, USMC and USN units and has carriers where appropriate.

SF2 Israel covers the 1956 Suez Crisis, 1967 Six Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.  You can play Israel, or Israel.

SF2 Europe is fictitious but grounded in reality.  The four campaigns are set in Germany and the conflicts are precipitated by the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the 1979 perception that after Vietnam and Watergate the US would not be able to resist a Soviet invasion of West Germany.

SF2 North Atlantic is a 1979 battle for Iceland in the same post Watergate scenario as Europe but with USS Nimitz and one lonely USAF Phantom squadron.

It's Europe where things are a little strange about the flyables.

You have The USAF, RAF, Armee de l'Air (France), Luftwaffe (West Germany), Belgian Air Component, and Koninklijke Luchtmacht (Royal Netherlands Air Force) to chose from.

The frustrating part is there are planes from those nations depicted for NPC use that aren't for the player.  The F-84G and F-104 are notably absent from the flyable list.  The F-104G and CF-104 are particularly hard felt because the F-104G was used by the Belgians, Germans and Dutch!  It's a pretty major type to skip, especially since we have Hunter, Mirage, Phantom and Skyhawk variants which cannot be used in ANY campaign.

Back when the world was young, though, the F-104G was included with the original SF!  Then one day it disappeared as a flyable plane.  There was once a C-130 too...

Clever people figured out how to revive the plane and you can do some simple mods to a couple of text files to make them usable.  Thanks to some DLC, you can revive the F-104A, three versions of the F-104C, three versions of the CF-104 and the F-104G.

It's a hot ship!

With the campaign editor you can even fly them in a campaign!  The Royal Jordanian Air Force had F-104A's during the Six Day War they left in Turkey.  It makes an interesting "what if" when you use the editor to play the bad guys.

It just seems strange that a backbone aircraft of four nations is excluded from player use even though it's in the game and once was a player plane.