Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/F-104 Zipper

"I'll make my honor for death!"

- F-104 Zipper pilot

The F-104 Zipper is primarily a suicide interceptor plane exclusive by Draph Terror Cell. Planned to be voiced by Elliot Gindi.

History
The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter is one of the earliest supersonic interceptors developed by the Federation of Aquila and has found its way into the air forces of multiple allies (that is the Gondor Communes, Andoran Republic, Alliance of Hawke and Katsuragi Protectorate's Self Defense Forces), thanks to its excellent performance and Lockheed's backdoor dealings. The speed of the F-104 earned it various nicknames such as "missile with a man in it" and "Zipper" or "Zip-104".

After finally being decommissioned in the early 1990s V.C. (with the exception of the Communes, which later modernize their own), many F-104s originally under the service of various Kalimdor and Askaraian countries such as Exodar or Elona found their way into the hands of various MLA warlords, whom after suffering heavy losses from various Guardian air strikes, become determined to develop their own air force to counter the warriors of Elysea.

Malfurion Stormrage originally planned to operate the F-104s as how they were originally operated: as interceptors. Lacking in supplies of air-to-air missiles meant that the MLA pilots had to use the plane's dual 20mm M61 Vulcan cannons to engage enemy aircraft—a highly ineffective tactic in a world of advanced radars and BVRAAMs. The lack of quality spare parts and lack of training combined with the F-104's hard to control nature further increased accident rates until the arrival of more advanced jets such as the Su-17 to MLA hands. The jet's high accident rate is starting to show and the morale of MLA's fledgling airforce is falling: dying in battle against the evil oppressors is glorious and honorable, but dying meaningless deaths in accidents is an end nobody wanted to meet.

This is when Draph Terror Cell leader Vaseraga came up with a simple yet brilliant solution: if the F-104s crash all the time, why not crash them into something valuable? Thus, Vaseraga began to train his fanatical army of suicide Draph pilots to fly these aircrafts like manned missiles, loading them with explosives and ramming them into enemy aircrafts. This tactic turned out to be far more effective and a nasty surprise to the Guardians. After losing numerous cargo planes and bombers to these suicide pilots, both nations began to provide escort for these large, sluggish aircrafts with interceptors. Even that didn't prevent the Zipper pilots from scoring a hit once in a while.

The Zipper is a suicide-interceptor aircraft that is shaped like a rocket with wider wingspan instead of an actual plane. It flies with an old jet engine and is only equipped with two vulcan cannons to take down unsuspecting aircraft. However - if ordered - the plane can be loaded with various explosives and persuade fanatical pilots to ram the plane directly to a target. More violent explosives can be used instead for more damage.