The Odd Airplane that Achieved a Crazy Mach Speed
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- In April 1985, as part of a trial pursued by British Airways, many of the world's fastest aircraft reunited in one place to test out the aviation world's latest star: the BAC Concorde, a supersonic airliner that could maintain a supercruise up to Mach 2.04
Only a few months earlier, the Franco-British aircraft flew from London Heathrow to Sydney in a record time of 17 hours, 3 minutes, and 45 seconds, including refueling stops.
Famous aircraft from NATO allied countries like F-15 Eagles, F-16 Fighting Falcons, Grumman F-14 Tomcats, Dassault Mirages, and F-104 Starfighters, were offered the once-in-a-lifetime chance to chase the Concorde.
But despite their best efforts, time and time again, these guardians of the skies could simply not reach the Concorde.
Only a fellow British Aircraft Corporation model would beat the others to the punch. A single BAC Lightning interceptor, flown by pilot Mike Hale, managed to overtake Concorde on a stern conversion intercept.
While the pilot described the Concorde as a very hot ship, he knew the aircraft he was piloting was nothing less than the fastest solely British fighter of all time.
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We never called it the "BAC Lightning" it was always the EE. Watching them take off from RAF Gutersloh was an eye opener, a fat little plane waddling down the runway then suddenly a vanishing silver dot high in the sky leaving two steaming circles on the tarmac. Awe inspiring sight.
My dad served at Gutersloh 👍🏻👍🏻
@MC-nb6jx I was stationed in Detmold but often had reason to go to Gutersloh, one of my happier duties in the early '70's.
My dad was at Gütersloh with 19 Sqn. Yep, it was 'English Electric'. He also called it the "Frightening" and happily told everyone the old story that the only reason it needed wings was to keep the nav lights apart.
Watched these in Singapore many many years ago as a young teenager. The noise was unbelievable 🇬🇧
It must of been awesome to whiteness it. Love to have seen it in person, your description reminds myself of watching the SAAF Buccaneers waddling to the threshold getting ready for take off. The Buccaneer looked dog ugly on the ground but when it flew it became a swan.
The Tornado was not an Italian aircraft - It was produced by Panavia - a joint British / German & Italian consortium. Also, the Tornado in the clip is a Tornado IDS (Inter Dictor Strike) the Ground attack / Bomber version- known in the RAF as a Tornado GR1 (later GR4). The Lighting was initially (but not fully) replaced by the RR Spey engined Phantom F4M (known in the RAF& RN as the Phantom FGR1 & FGR2). The last two Lightning Squadrons (5 Sqn & 11Sqn) were finally re-equipped (as were the Phantom Squadrons) With the Tornado F3 ADV (Air Defence Varient) which had a completely different RADAR and Weapons system, enhanced Engines and Avionics. The F3 was a pure British development of the Tornado although the Italians did briefly also lease some F3's as a stop gap before the Typhoons came on line.
Well done, your comments are spot on and worth mentioning. I've lived in France since 2006 but I've often been annoyed at the way some of my French friends talk about Concorde (with a wing heavily influence by the Fairy Delta 2) as though it was a French triumph of engineering!
F4K was FG1. There was no FGR1.
Thanks for the correction, should have checked rather than from memory :) @@docnelson2008
@@docnelson2008 HOW MANY different countries had companies participate in the Concord project?
Britain AND France, that even I remember after so long.
I still have some RAF magazines my dad got and the cutaway shows where the parts for the Tornado were made. Front fusalage and Tail UK, Wings Italy, central fuselage Germany. Also 20% of the engine was made by Fiat.....
I remember skiving off work and going up to RAF Binbrook and sitting at the end of the runway watching the Lightnings taking off, if there were a large number of cars parked at the fence, the pilots would put on a bit of a show by lifting off and then dropping the arse and going almost vertical with full afterburn, the jetwash would almost rock the Transit van we were sitting in over as they disappeared into the skies above us. English Electric were an incredible company, manufacturing everything from fridges ans cookers, to the Deltic passenger locomotive which used the Napier marine diesel engines and were the most powerful locos on British Railways producing 3300bhp, Sadly Britain manufactures virtually nothing these days
My father used to do the same thing.
My dad worked for English Electric, he was very proud of the Deltic and Lightning. And we had an American style English Electric fridge when I was a young kid which was still going strong when I left home years later. I served at Binbrook with the Lightning in the mid 70s. We usually had aircraft enthusiasts just outside the fence. The Lightning is definitely my favourite aircraft of all time
Unfortunately British Industry has been killed by the Labour Party.
and the tories too!!@@JonnyBabyaka
@@poutramos4826 My parents had an EE frig in about 1958. When I got married in 1978, they gave it to me, and bought a new one. It lasted well!
Along with the Vulcan, the Lightning is my favourite aircraft. I'm lucky (old) enough to have seen them both at air shows at the tail end of their respective careers.
Saw one at Weston super mare airshow the beast went vertical after takeoff on full afterburner !
e7945 that was it's party trick 😃
All 3 V Bombers flew over our house when I was a kid but usually Vulcans and a lot of American A10s. The Lightning I saw fly over once and it stopped every person in view in their tracks to have a good stare, it was something worth staring at.
My dad worked on both. Lightnings at Leuchars and Vulcans at Scampton.
I'm even older, I remember them entering squadron service 😅
I've always felt sorry for the Lightning. It was designed to do exactly what was asked of it - to be a high performance point interceptor for stopping high level enemy bombers - but when the military landscape changed everybody criticised the design for its lack of range and weapons load, things that were not part of the intital requirement.
Yeah a rare case of an aircraft actually being designed and delivered for its sole initial purpose. So many get initially accepted as a fighter, then they have to be a low level bomber, then a interceptor then a multi-role recon...and so on.
Pure breeds die young
& it did so without killing its pilots, unlike the F-104.
You shouldn't feel sorry for it mate, it was a triumph of engineering that led to modern designs. We'll never know how close we came to disaster but it's highly probable the reason we didn't was aircraft like this meant the other side weren't confident they could get their bombers through and other ahead of their times designs like the Vulkan meant they knew we could. She served her purpose exactly as she was needed to do is how I see the Lightning.
@andyharding1514
It was the profile and weather that killed pilots in the F-104. Spain didn’t lose a single one because they used it as a fighter not an interdictor.. and it’s sunnier there.
The F-105 had a similar non-combat loss rate to the F-104 because supersonic speeds at low altitudes in bad weather is a recipe for disaster.
The Lightning if at full throttle could only last for around 30 minutes endurance. That shows how amazing the Concorde was, knowing how amazing the lightning was.
Full power 10 mins to empty tanks
That's all it would take to get to its target and shoot it down. Getting back again was less of a priority.
I just found out that Concorde has more supersonic time than all other supersonic aircraft _combined!_
Even the SR-71 spent less than 10% of its total time at Mach 3.
The other side of the coin is that the F2A could stay up for close on 2 hours if handled carefully.
@@sichere No 30 minutes on the initial marks, longer with belly and drop tanks.
I was at an airshow at North Weald Essex 1973 ... A lightning came along the runway at about 100 feet , kicked in the afterburner and went ballistic into the clouds . The noise was amazing ,
I too was at that air show yes it was the only time I saw the lightning in flight. I'd just loved that plane as a kid, never stopped drawing it on schoolbook covers which I once got the cane for lol ( only two swipes!)
Saw exactly the same a couple of years earlier. . . A few of us from 1147 atc camped close to the end of the runway in the woods , the Lighting was doing “touch&go’s “ . . . A lifetime ago 😂
I do find half of this to be a figment of the imagination of the author. The Lightning was an interceptor, nothing else, and it was superb. It didn't need to fly thousands of miles or carry 20 different types of ordnance. It needed to go quick, and that it did better than anything else.
That was it; fly, get up there, shoot down, land...
Nothing imaginary about it.
The 1957 Defence White Paper explicitly said that manned interceptors were obsolete in the face of ICBMs which is why it called for all interceptor projects to be cancelled.
The USAF came to the same conclusion and cancelled their XF-108 interceptor in 1959. So did the Canadians who cancelled the Avro Arrow the same year.
Nations like France and Sweden had aircraft more suited to multirole capabilities like the Mirage and Draken. Also the US Navy initially designed the F-4 as an interceptor but gave it the power and capabilities to be adapted into a multirole fighter. The YF-12 interceptor was mainly as subterfuge to cover up the CIA A-12 and USAF SR-71 programs and also never entered service.
The only dedicated interceptors that entered service after 1960 other than the Lightning were the Soviet Mig-25 and Mig-31. And other than their impeccable reconnaissance capabilities.. performed very poorly against western multirole fighters much slower and less powerful than them.
The Lightning itself only survived because the RAF protested and as a private venture from EE it was not vulnerable to government cancellation of development like what befell the Saunders Roe SR.53 and SR.177.
There were also other developments which hastened the demise of the interceptor like low-level interdictors (the TSR-2 and F-111) where interceptors lacking low altitude performance and look down radar would be unable to shoot them down.. and the use of stand-off weaponry where the interceptor also would not be able to defend against because the missiles were too small/fast and the bombers releasing them were out of range.
Completely the wrong end of the stick. It wasn't the Concorde pilot who described his aircraft as a "hot ship", it was the Lightning pilot who said his particular aircraft was "a pretty hot ship, even for a Lightning." This channel never fails to disappoint.
You kind of get used to the errors. Fact checking and proof reading on all dark channels is lacking.
I thought thats what he said TBH but maybe i just assumed that because that makes the most sense.
My band mate was stationed in Guttersloh in Germany in the early 70’s and they kept a hot seat system of 6 lightnings 24/7. The pilots were cycled for 2 hours at a time sitting ready to start. Guttetsloh was only 30k from east Germany
I was lucky enough to have a go on the Lightning flight simulator at RAF Binbrook not long before the Lightnings were retired. It was mind-blowing. Got airborne, gear up, pulled to the vertical and watched it accelerate vertically through Mach 1.
Thanks for making this, I never realised they were made in such low numbers or prototypes first flew in early 50's.
In late 70's, my girlfriend's brother was in RAF 'somewhere in Scotland'.
He told us Russian's always sent a 'Christmas card delivery' just to disrupt things on 25th Dec.
This particular year, there were American's on base with F4 Phantoms, bragging about how great it was. (it was as it carried tons of ordinance)
Usual call, intercept Russian bomber.
He said it was like a Ferrari and a 100E Ford Popular the difference in acceleration down runway (Ford Pop was a side valve low power car from 1960's)
Phantom was barely off the ground by the time Lightning, in vertical climb, was at 20,000ft so I'm pretty sure you were 100% correct saying it was fastest climbing interceptor
Small correction: the first supersonic wind tunnel was located in Switzerland no later than 1934. The first supersonic wind tunnel in America was a war trophy that the Americans had dismantled in Germany in 1945. It had been built by the Germans in 1937.
Yes, there was a deal done after the war, the British got the German jet technology, the Americans got the Rocket technology.
As much as I like Dark Skies, accuracy is optional.
No the world's first supersonic wind tunnel started operating was at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England in 1922.
Absolutely false, in February of 1945 Abe Silverstein at NACA started design work on what was America's first supersonic wind tunnel, it was built at NACA's Cleveland research center and went into operation in June of the same year, it was a vertically aligned "stack system" wind tunnel and absolutely nothing about it had ANYTHING to do with wind tunnels from Germany, fabrication was expedited from using existing NACA wind tunnel components.
Also there was no "done deal" as to who got what at the end of WW2 when it came to German research and equipment, everyone was on their own in regards to who got what, it was first come first serve.
And German tech being influential in the aerospace and aeronautical fields in the US after the war has been greatly exaggerated over the year's by people looking to tell sensational stories mostly for the sake of selling books and getting people to tune into television programs, Horten flying wing? Never flew and undoubtedly would have killed it's pilot just like their previous effort did, meanwhile in the US Jack Northrup had successful flying wing designs dating back before the war, German rocket scientist's? Werner Von Braun himself admitted after the war that without the benefit of access to Dr Robert Goddard's work in the US he'd have never gotten a rocket off the ground before the end of the war, rocket motors? Before Von Braun and his team in America got their first one off the ground in Alabama at the Redstone facility Scott Crossfield and the team he worked with had over 50 Reaction Motors test flights in their aircraft development program, Saturn V rocket? Not Werner Von Braun's design contrary to popular belief, his proposed rocket design for going to the moon was rejected by NASA in favor of a design concept put forth by a talented young engineer at Chance-Vought, the Apollo project involved over 400,000 people, only one was named Von Braun and while smart and experienced his involvement in Apollo has been greatly exaggerated over the year's, he was an administrator by the time of Apollo, the truth is Canada actually gets ripped off and is totally ignored when it comes to America's space program, simply because a story about an ex Nazi designing all of America's rockets is far more sensational and sells a lot more books and gets a lot more clicks on videos than the truth about a bunch hockey fans and makers of maple syrup being neck deep in America's space program, Canada experienced what they still refer to as the "brain drain" when the US Congress approved billions of dollars for the space program in the late 50's/early 60's, brilliant engineer's poured into America from Canada including the genius and his team responsible for the design of the Gemini capsule, the fact is Canada was far more responsible for the US getting onto the moon than any other country.
Even swept wings on American aircraft have been erroneously credited to captured German tech after the war, of course people looked at the information brought back from Germany after the war but the fact is swept wing aircraft had already been built and flown in the US, the program on one of them never really advanced because of a failed engine design, fact is swept wing design had already been in NACA wind tunnels before even the debut of the ME262 in Germany, but swept wings aren't any good for the speeds typically attained by propeller aircraft and is why the US swept wing prototype didn't advance, when the engine currently under development at the time failed the aircraft couldn't fly with available engine's at the speeds necessary for swept wings to work, so anything further had to wait for the advent of jets to attain the speeds necessary for swept wings to be useful, at lower speeds they're horrible which accounts for variable swept wings.
The Germans weren't any smarter or advanced than anyone else, they simply had a period for about 5 years or so before the war where things like rockets, which were actually pioneered in America, jet engine's, that were being worked on in England, and other emerging technologies had a government pouring money into their developments, but even then they didn't have an atomic bomb at the end of the war did they? They didn't have a proximity fuse did they? And despite everyone thinking that the Fritz X was some kind of big deal the fact is the American Sea Whiz was a fire and forget anti ship missile, and the American Fido was a fire and forget torpedo that spelled doom for any submarine it was unleashed on, it's just that no one ever talks about or hardly even knows about them because once again they're not nearly as sensational as stories that involve Nazi's and the nonsense narrative of "six months earlier and it'd have changed the course of the war".
Every country had engineer's and inventor's just as smart or smarter than the one's in Germany.
@@dukecraig2402 The British made full use of the German wind tunnels and V1 rocket technology and the world's first supersonic wind tunnel was at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England in 1922.
As an air cadet I saw two EE Lightnings exercise an intercept. I have no idea how fast they were going on takeoff, but once off the ground they went what looked vertically. They were still accelerating vertically! Apparently they were going over Mach 2 before they got to intercept altitude. I also heard that RAF Lightnings got up to a USAF U2 aircraft on a practice intercept and, had it been real, could have shot it down. Don't know the real story but it was told to me by a former RAF fighter pilot.
Was an absolute monster of a jet
The first part regarding the race against the Concord is very interesting. To think there was a time that some of the best and fastest fighter jets of the day could not catch a high passenger jet. Incredible! Thank you for another fantastic video!
Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird says, "Hold my beer!" 😂
😎🇬🇧
@@lancerevell5979 it said fighter, interceptor plane, not spy plane
@@lancerevell5979But was the pilot of the SR-71 enjoying glass of chilled champagne served with crudités by a stewardess?
@@peterabbott1974 The YF-12 and A-12 were single seat Mach 3+ interceptors! Also, they are talking about sustained Mach 2 flight. The F-15 had a speed of well OVER Mach 2.3-or dash speed. The F-4 could stay at Mach 2 until its tanks were empty. Although the Lightning was fast-no doubt, its best in the time to climb arena. If not mistaken, it STILL holds some records. This narrator has a history of embellishment. One thing for sure, records are made to be broken.
I remember these flying over Southern England in the early 1970s. A remarkable sight, but an even more unforgettable sound!
Also intercepted the U2. In fact, it climbed past it and ended up at 88,000ft! The U2 was at 68,000.
This is not nearly as impressive as you think it is. The aircraft accelerated and performed a zoom climb to that altitude. The EEL's climb performance was largely a result of it having a low fuel fraction and burning through it very quickly. There is a reason it has a safety record on par with the F-104, despite having been used for a single, and being used by far fewer countries than the F-104.
@EEEEEEE354 it's impressive because it's the only plane to have intercepted the U2. It's also impressive because its impressive!
@@tomrafal3655 the Mirage III has also done this, and the F-104 has accidentally done it lol
@@EEEEEEE354 Its impressive enough that few of the Lightnings contemporaries could do it, and the Americans were sure that the U2 was safe from Interception, so it must have been somewhat impressive for the Americans that they didn't think it could happen.
Secondly, I can assure you that a zoom climb is still a death sentence for an enemy aircraft, because the Lightning can then descend on that aircraft with Aden cannons with impunity, and receive no weapons pointing back at it.
@@Galahadfairlight I'm not talking about the lethality of a zoom climb. I'm talking about it's relative "impressiveness" compared to other aircraft. There is a common misconception that the EEL was this super unique airplane that was the only thing that could climb that well. Not only is this wrong, but contemporaries during its own era come could close, or even excee it. It's climb performance was not even that stellar, yet it sacrificed so many things to achieve that climb performance. It had probably the shortest range of any fighter of the era, and it had significantly less payload capacity. Like sure, yeah it has guns.... Okay what didn't? What is special about that? Hell, the EEL even had a safety record that was almost as bad as the F-104, yet it was only used by two countries, and had one role. The F-104 was serving as multi-role interceptor and even nuclear strike platform.
The EEL is severely overrated.
Love the Lightning.
Since when was the Tornado an ‘Italian engineered’ aircraft? Panavia GmbH comprised 42.5% UK, 42.5% West Germany and 15% Italy. Turbo-Union, the conglomerate which made the engines was 40% Rolls-Royce, 40% BMW and 20% FIAT.
Sounds Italian engineered to me.
Tornado was an UK-German joint venture with Italy having a 15 percent share of the programme.
And the ADV was exclusively British development
Correct and I just pointed out on my post 👍
lov that Lightning . . . to improve range larger fuel cell & drop tanks were added in later versions. R.A.F. ( Engineer Branch ) Walter "Taffy" Holden' had an unexpected short 12 minute flight in a Lightning XM135 while troubleshooting an unusual electrical fault on the tarmac in 1966.
Nice plane, but the F-104 starfighter was the first aircraft to simultaneously hold the world speed record @ 1,404.012 mph (2,259.538 km/h) and altitude 103,389 feet (31,513 m) records. Later versions reached 1,528 mph (2,459 km/h). It was the first aircraft to take off under its own power and cross both the 30,000-meter and 100,000-foot thresholds. It set a 30,000-meter (98,400 ft) time-to-climb record of 904.92 seconds. It also set an unofficial altitude record of 120,800 ft (36,800 m). It was also used to set three women's world's speed records. However, its short stubby wings were unforgiving with mistakes and some countries lost a large proportion of their aircraft through accidents (although the accident rate varied widely depending on the user and operating conditions).
Greetings from Cape Town. Thunder City, a Cape Town based private operation had a couple of Lightnings operating, until the Overberg airshow on 14 Nov 2009 ended with a crash, that claimed the life of the pilot Dave Stock. I was there, very sad.
A terrible tragedy Dave Stock couldn’t even eject due to an ejection seat fault 😔
I actually was part of history in Sydney when Concorde first arrived. We were in a large boat in Botany Bay very close to the start of the runway. Unfortunately, it landed at the other end of the the runway and we saw nothing........but we were there!
I used to play cricket with a former Lightning squadron leader. He said it was simply the biggest rocketship outside of NASA. Breaking the sound barrier in a near vertical climb again and again on a more or less daily basis would do that.
The Lightning was replaced by the F4 Phantom, which was in turn replaced by the Tornado, with some overlap in each case...
Beautiful aircraft makes me proud to be British it’s a shame that Britain doesn’t produce aircraft like this anymore virtually no manufacturers left in Britain 😢
I think they're working on a new 6th gen fighter with Japan.
I used to go to airshows to watch this fighter and it took of and went vertical and your body shock from the sound! It was such a sight to see!
I think the Fairey Delta 2 was the first British aircraft to achieve level supersonic flight without an afterburner, after that the developers wanted it to beat the American speed record, the government was opposed to the attempt but in 1956 it broke the record by 300mph at mach 1.73.
The delta was such a beautiful looking machine
The FD 2 broke the world absolute speed record by a margin that has never been bettered.
The Lightning had three incredible attributes: It's speed, it's climb rate and it's ceiling. In 1984 one Lightning reached a height of 88,000ft!
An incredibly advanced aircraft for it's time, with a highly specialised role which it was superb at. However once this role became redundant it wasn't versatile enough for many other duties.
That one lightning was also flown by Mike Hale.
The EEL was a phenomenal aircraft, and still my favourite combat aircraft ever! A bit bias being a Brit, but the Buccaneer and Victor are close behind!
Agreed! The Bucc was designed for carrier ops and that's a tough life but the Fleet Air Arm pilots often said, 'it was carved out of the solid.' In its RAF capacity it served in the 1991 Gulf War, laser designating targets for the IDS Tornados. It even got used, with considerable success, as a dive-bomber in the same conflict.
This is why there's a 'GREAT' in our nations name. Imagine the Captain of Concord seeing this lighting streak by....
I don’t think it streaked by slowly last would be more accurate although that was still better than the rest that day 😊👍
When the Saudis retired the lightnings they stuck one on a plinth on a roundabout outside the airbase in tabuk. It looked like it was taking off from the road running past the airport. Nicely done, but it always reminded me of those stands that you got with airfix kits where the plane would never stay on, but hung off the back,and looked just like this lightning doing a steep takeoff
I worked for Ferranti ind Edinburgh Scotland an we put a repainted Lightning on a plinth outside our factory search for South Gyle Lightning to see the film of how it was done.
Lightning was not the first British supersonic project. That prize went to the Miles M-52. Air Ministry Spec E.24/43 (October 1943) asked for an aircraft capable of 1,000 miles per hour in level flight for 1000 miles. The project progressed well with Eric Brown ready to be test pilot. But in February 1946, it cancelled with no warning and no reason given. The English Electric Lighting came from a project issued after M52 was cancelled.
I saw one up close when I was a kid. It was stunning before it even took off.
I was RAF groundcrew on Lightings and it was well known that some were much faster than others. The Concorde racer featured in this video was most definitely the hottest of the hottest.
Such a fantastic aircraft ..From a ex 111 sqd armourer 1974/75 ..
Thats very interesting , best engine performance smoothest skin ?
@@eflanagan1921
It’s the same as cars/bikes some come out of the factory with better engines bodies etc.
the tolerances vary with any engine body etc v occasionally you get one where the parts are just right so it’s ‘blueprinted’ in a way.
The one that seemed to be better than the others had a tail designation M (for Mother). It was the same plane that took off to intercept a U2, climbed past the U2 at 70,000ft and pointed down to inercept
@@1tonyboat Indeed, from a rigger on Lightnings at Wattisham and Binbrook 75 - 79.
I tip my hat to you for this video, good work sir
Wing Commander Roland Prosper "Bee" Beamont was, by all accounts a superb test pilot. I heard the story that, once in service, they developed a flight simulator for the Lightning. The development engineers amused themselves by flying it from Boscombe Down to North Wales and back using a built in scoring system that totaled the deviations from an ideal course. Beaumont was invited to try his hand at the "game" and astounded everyone by hardly seeming to move the controls yet scoring way better than the existing course record by nearly an order of magnitude.
Re-examined data shows the first Lightning prototype test flight exceeded Mach 1 (4th August 1954 Roly Beaumont).
The original design requirement for a supersonic jet dated from 1942 with the cancelled E.24/43 - the Miles M.52 which was modified into Yeager's Bell X-1 rocket plane that broke the sound barrier in October 1946.
The first british jet to break the sound barrier was the DH-108 Comet which resembled the Me163 Komet, first flew 1946. This is the aircraft that killed Geoffrey de Havilland. A revised version would exceed Mach 1 on 6th Sept 1948
On 10th March 1956 the Fairey Delta 2 would utterly smash the world air speed record with 1,132mph. It's delta wing would be used to develop Concorde.
The DH108 was called 'Swallow' by the Ministry of Supply. The DH88 was the Comet racer, whilst the DH106 was the Comet airliner. The DH108 never officially exceeded Mach 1 although John Derry (6th Sept 1948) remarked he believed it had done so in a shallow dive, despite there being no evidence.
They certainly built some long lasting & formidable military aircraft in the 50's & 60's. I'll bet they were very affordable compared to pricing today. Obviously. Thanks.
They built horses for courses back then. It is this Jack of all trades fashion that helps makes stuff expensive along with the politics of sharing out amongst many countries. If you designed a ferrari to not only be a good ferrari but also be a good horse box it would inevitably be even more expensive than a plain ferrari and a separate plain horsebox. This idiotic obsession with having common parts with models that have to have different parts anyway that adds cost. Look at the f35, vtol, and carrier landings require totally different parts for different situations. So does having some common parts actually save anything compared with just designing different aircraft in the first place? I am not convinced it does
F-14 was more expensive than the F-22 if you account for inflation. Media blows spending out of proportion. Are they lying, not exactly, but it’s not really fair either. The difference is the Cold War. So much money was spent without much regard to cost.
Correction, the final flight was not June 1988, but July 1988 as I was a student at Cranfield Institute of Technology when 4 or 5 incredibly noisy EE Lightnings landed and parked in front of the Aeronautics Department hangar. I think an Australian millionaire named Arnold Glass bought them, as he was a frequent person around the place driving a Cadillac and flying a Red Arrows Folland Gnat he'd also bought. The Lightnings were flown in by RAF pilots.
Interesting days at Cranfield Institute of Technology. I did Bio-aeronautics
Good to see 29 Sqdn included (my old sqdn)
Mine to. Phantoms.
I grew up at Boscombe Down... there's a Lightning on a plinth at the entrance... my scout hut was opposite. I grew up thinking the Lightning was the coolest aeroplane I ever saw. As Jim says below, funny looking plane on the tarmac, but in the air (and on the plinth in flying pose), it's just beautiful.
From my earliest days (I grew up in an U.S. Air Force community), I've always like British aircraft. From the start they have a history of building nice looking or interesting aircraft (Save for a few Stinkers which we have too). It's shame the cost has gone stupid and they no longer can afford to do what they once did. This aircraft is a prime example.
Best looking prop aircraft for me was a toss up between the Spitfire and the P51D and the best looking jet a toss up again between the Hawker Hunter and the F86 Sabre.
Loved the Lightning but it and it’s rivals the F104 Starfighter and the MIG21 Fishbed just didn’t have the looks
@@nigeh5326 The "Spitfire"is the Classic, Function and Beauty. I really liked the F-104 when it came out cause I'm a Speed Freak, but that aircraft killed more pilots than enemy fire.
The Harrier is probably my favourite, they were perfect in a lot of ways and not too expensive either. Very unwise cancelling them, there are now no British planes on British aircraft carriers. How the mighty fall. I used to love the F111 as a kid, still one of the meanest looking planes ever made.
@@dunk8157 plenty of us here in Britain agree they were dropped too soon.
But with the actions of the last couple of governments we are lucky not to have the RAF flying just gliders, the Royal Navy rowing boats and the army shooting air rifles.
Quicker we get a General Election here the better.
@@dunk8157 It was Rolls-Royce that made the Harrier happen with that innovative nozzle jet. A friend used to work on F-111s, They called them the Flying Wonder Pig because of all the hydraulic leaks they had to keep fixing. You'll be getting F-35's soon
One of the most beautiful planes ever built.😊
Donald “Deke” Slayton NASA’s first chief astronaut, got to fly the P1 during his test pilot career and described it as the most exciting aircraft he ever flew.
Just to clarify - the test pilot's name was Wing Commander Roland BEAmont - without the 'u', and pronounced 'bee-mont'.
Was fortunate enough to sit in a Lightning cockpit on a special tour at RAF Binbrook. Our guide told us that the cockpit of the two seater version was only 11 inches wider. Awesome jet that I first saw in flight in 1978 over RAF Lakenheath.
Very strange case of an USAF pilot on secondment to an RAF squadron, flying a Lightning out over the North sea when he had to ditch.
The plane was found but there was never any trace of the pilot. The weirdest thing was the canopy was closed & I believe locked when the plane was located on the seabed....🤔
As a lad i use to watch the Lighting when scrambled from Binbrook. Usually one every 15 Minutes. The English Electric lightning was the only plane to catch the Blackbird.
I remember the EE Lightnings regularly flying up the Ribble river from Warton aerodrome and breaking the sound barrier rattling the windows,
Fantastic interceptor for its time
A technicality but the Lightning was an interceptor, not a fighter.
Beautiful aircraft.
It was a lightning (the same one that intercepted concorde if my memory is correct) that also intercepted a U2, much to the surprise of the American pilot.
There is a story about how a pilot in a U2 spy plane flying over Cuba at high altitude was astonished to see a Concorde fly past at the same altitude, the passengers waving at him, supping champagne and eating little sandwiches.
I used to watch the Lightening fly regularly when I was much younger. There was an RAF base near our house in south of England back then. Stunning aircraft.
Concord was fabulous and the prettiest airplane ever to fly. It followed the British design (they gave the French design to the Russians).The EE Lightning had no peers in many years of service in the role it was designed for with astonishing performance. It was over 20 years after it first flew it caught Concord. The British had data from the Miles M52 supersonic jet which was sacrificed by the Labour government for a loan.
One Lightning pilot summed it up brilliantly. Of his first Lightning flight, I had everything under control, Then I released the parking brake. !!!
The whole Dark series is done really well.
Thanks very much, a brilliant film. The Lightning also intercepted the U2 from above and there are reports of the Lightning reaching altitudes of well over 80000 ft
There was a place in South Africa that took tourists to those altitudes in a Lightning.
As a Brit this video truly puts a smile on my face.
In '86, whilst based at Coltishall, we had the Alabama National Air Guard detached to us. Before they left we had an assortment of RAF aircraft come through, to 'show off'. The one that totally blew their minds was the Lightning.
These aircraft were awe inspiring. At the Farnborough air shows everything on the ground vibrated as the planes accelerated then snap turned vertically. Never mind the data, the experience was enough to let everyone know this was not a plane to be messed with.
As a mechanic looking at the engine layout all I can say is man I bet that would be a pain in the butt to work on.
anyone now feel like watching Top Gun? i love these old war planes so dam much
As a kid I was in awe of this beautiful aircraft which was always in the skies of Lincolnshire. If remember right they were based at R.A.F Binbrook ? A true legend from the golden age of Great British aircraft like the Harrier, Vulcan and the mighty Buccaneer.
I do have to say. You Brits can build some magnificent aircraft.
there's a privately-owned trainer still in service in south africa
No, there isnt. The Thunder City lightning were grounded after one crashed and, subsequently, their owner died and the operation ceased.
Another awesome video.... Thank you.👌
I worked on Lightnings at R.A.F.Binbrook 1980 - 1986 .
Sleek, beautiful and crazy fast! ⚡
To me it's always sad to see a great warrior of the sky's put in a museum. I know planes like this served their time well, but still...
Boy Howdy! That is so Boss that they'd allow for such a "Catch Me" style game! It's a TesTamenT to the builders of _The Lightning_ that a thirty year old fighter could run down, catch and destroy a brand new "state of the art" _Super Concorde_ !!! Whew!! WIK!! ...although my fave remains The _F-8 CRUSADER_ aka "The Last Gunfighter" \m/ Swell Vid!! :)
6:05. The first western european combat aircraft with supersonic capability to enter service was french Dassault Super Mystere B2 in 1957.
Q). Time to 50,000 feet?
A). Yes.
"Teddy" Petter was a genius
Still outclimbs everything!!!
There’s one parked just outside Norwich airport, i drive past it nearly everyday, it’s a classic.
The name is 'Beemont', not 'Bowmont'. Roland Beamont. It used a Reheat system, not an American 'Afterburner'. The Lightning was almost always called the 'English Electric Lightning', not the 'BAC Lightning'.
A beast of an airplane.
My favourite cold war jet.
Absolutely an incredible aircraft! Does anyone know what happened to the lighting that was next to the A1 near Newark ( GB) for years?
Thank you Mr Rolls and Royce we do remember you
Thanks, Dark Skies.
I'm not really qualified to enter a debate on the engineering technicalities, so I'll just add that in my opinion, the English Electric Lightning is the coolest looking plane ever built.
That was probably the best documentary I've ever seen on this aircraft. Thank you.
Lightnings followed by the F-4s always started the Battle of Britain airshow every year at RAF Leuchars. The Lightnings were absolute rocket ships, their rate of climb was mind boggling!😮😁
As a child I would watch these take off from RAF Coltishall, you could get remarkably close to the runway then, a sight ans noise which I would never forget.
An American U2 famously took a picture of Concord and forwarded it to the Brits who replied with a photo of the U2 by a Lightning flying high above
Tornado was a joint venture
Very educational!
Very interesting, have read Beaumont's book. It is a must read . Can not the remember the name of the book. As he was a test pilot in WW2. He test flew well known British designed and built aircraft and flew most of them in battle aswell.
BEAMONT Beemont!
😂🙈
1 of my 2 favourites.
Pilot, Mike Hale also in 1984, intercepted a U2 at 60,000 feet and then advanced to 88,000 feet. I think the Americans thought that this couldn’t be possibly done, but of course it was?
Great video, as always, on an interesting vintage-futuristic jet fighter
Excellent video presentation on this venerable warrior.
"The only reason the Lightning had wings was to keep the nav lights apart..." also known by it's crews as the "frightening". This is what happens when you take two really fast engines and place the bare minimum of material around them which will allow them to fly!
Yep - they were flying drag racers, and no mistake! I was at RAF Luqa (Malta) when some Lightnings popped in for a short visit. When told that it was the local villages fiesta that day, and that the villagers would be letting off fireworks, the Lightning pilots decided to join in the fun, flying over Luqa, pulling back the stick and hitting the afterburners! If they weren't climbing vertically, they were so close to it as to make no odds. You didn't just *hear* the sound, the ground trembled underfoot. And the villagers from Luqa? They LOVED it!
And to store the main landing gear.
I also liked the quote "I was in full control till I let the hrakes off"
I love this fighter!
And she had the most highly swept wings on a non Delta wing design ⚡😉👍
The Electric Lightning is the Chuck Norris of British aircraft. To be clear, the Eurofighter has significantly higher thrust to weight than the Electric would have in its wildest wet dream.
It was, however, widely regarded as one of the best performance aircraft of its time.
According to wikipedia, thrust to weight, at best - when the plane was empty - was 1.02:1. Fueled with missiles closer to .8.
As for intercepting a Concord. The Concord normally flies at Mach 2.0 at 50,000 ft.
It take a lot for a modern fighter to hit Mach 2.0, let alone exceed it. It takes a lot to hit 50,000ft. If you are not positioned correctly, you are not going to be able to intercept the Concord.
That's the thing with the SR71, the Mig 31, in theory, in the right place and assuming the SR71 doesn't notice you (the SR-71 cruises at Mach 3.3 - but it can go faster for short periods), could in theory intercept the SR71. Maybe. But if you let the SR71 get even a bit too far ahead, your Mach 4.5 missile will not catch it (and if you try with the missile in high speed mode it will run out of fuel even quicker).
Just for comparison
Lightning time to climb - from standstill to 36,000ft, 3 minutes (unheard of time when it was introduced).
F4 Phantom II - 50,000ft (ish) 1 minute 54 seconds
A stripped down F15, with a thrust to weight ratio of 1.4:1 (just enough fuel to set the record) went to 98,000+ ft (30,000 m) in 207.80 seconds.
3 seconds from dead stop to airborne
At 425knot pulled up in a 2.5 G Immelmann turn and ended up, at 56 seconds, flying mach 1.2 over the air field at 32,000ft. So it accelerate to mach 1 while under G (which means the wings were inducing drag to make the lift....).
Leveling out and accelerating to Mach 2.2 at 37,000, it then pulled into a 60 degree climb. At some point the pilot shut the engines down to prevent overheating.
It was still doing 700 knots at 98,000 ft!
F15s were used to intercept Mig 25s over Israel where the F4s had no chance.
BTW, of note the British Harrier had greater than 1:1 thrust:weight as well.... with no afterburner!
LIttle known, the later versions of the A-4 skyhawk were 1:1, no afterburner with a light fuel load. A-4M Skyhawk II - 11,400 lbs of thrust and 9500 lbs empty.