I got to agree with everyone else, the AI art is terrible please stop using it in your thumbnails that jet is doesn't resemble the lightning at all. I don't have anything against AI art but it just doesn't work here.
The TSR2 was another groundbreaking British aviation project which was cancelled at the 11th hour..... Get on to your basement dwellers to start writing 👍
As others have said, that image is not a Lightning. Also, it was built by the English Electric Company, not the Electric Company, hence its name was the English Electric Lightning.
Ah yes the electric company, where you can get your everyday electronics like dishwashers, microwaves, and interceptor jets. Wait that's basically just General Electric...
They are AI generated thumbnails evidently. Looking back over the channel every single vehicle looks like an incorrectly composited mix of the intended vehicle and all of it's contemporaries, and the 'art style' has all the hallmarks with the gradients and high red and blue usage
They were certainly an engineering challenge. With Two tours at Binbrook I was there towards the end, being posted out a little while before the very end, having eventually worked in every area of my aircraft electrician trade across the years from the equipment bays to the flight line there, with the exception of 5 Sqdn. There was certainly a lot of job satisfaction keeping them in the air, and they were a spectacular joy to watch once they were up. I have many memories of the good, and the sad and not so good times I had around them. As such they remain in memory like old, much missed friends. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Be well everyone.
A rocket with a man strapped to it. That's how one pilot described it to me when I was in the RAF. I don't know how true it is, but I was once told that they couldn't establish a true ceiling altitude for it as it would run out of fuel before it got there. Great piece of kit. I loved it.
@@bluesrocker91 definitely not. She has always been awesome also. The only true working VTOL. The Russian yaks were nowhere near up to par as a Harrier.
I had the pleasure of seeing a Lightening intercept first hand. It was a night flight in our F-111 heading back to RAF Upper Heyford at a reasonably high altitude. The controller asked if we minded a Lightening running am intercept on us. Of course I said yes. He called out the Lightening’s position, very low and a few miles at our 11:00. I did a quick check off our navigation, fuel and engines before looking out to get a visual. I picked up his flashing beacon easy enough. The son of a bitch was already halfway through his turn and halfway to our altitude. Very impressive.
I'm immensely jealous. I always thought that the Lighting was a beautiful yet odd looking bird, but its capabilities were insane. As a US Navy Aviation veteran, I always thought the Lighting was a better bird than the Phantom, second only to the Tomcat. It's a shame the Lighting didn't get modernized and a second lease on life. I honestly think it would have been a great NATO attack platform.
@@SkunkApe407 As an RAF veteran who worked with Lightnings, much as I love them I'd have to admit the Phantom is a better all round aircraft. Sure the lightning was an awesome interceptor but had limitations on range and armament. Having said the, Lightning is still my favourite aeroplane. There were plans to upgrade it, better radar, avionics and possible variable geometry but it only went as far as drawings. The UK was pretty much broke so no major updates and aircraft like TSR2 were cancelled. When the RN carriers were scrapped we inherited their Phantoms and Buccaneers, all future aircraft would have to be bought from the US or were designed in collaboration with other European countries.
@@poutramos4826 it's a crying shame, too. The UK really showed a lot of promise in the fighter/interceptor market. A little bit of help from GE and Lockheed would have done wonders for the UK's indigenous design and production capabilities. Not to mention what that would mean for the strength of UN and NATO forces. But it would make far too much sense for the US and its allies to produce the same kit, without the need for insanely expensive purchase agreements.
@@poutramos4826 I feel the same way about the Canadian market, too. The Avro Canada Arrow was a spectacular bird. Our failure to help our northern neighbors develop an indigenous aerospace industry cost us and our NATO allies a lot of headway. I swear, if the US tried investing in our allies, instead of milking them dry, we wouldn't be looking at situations like Ukraine and Taiwan right now.
I was at the West Wycombe aerodrome airshow in the late 70s. Imagine the scene, the flying display throughout the afternoon, had aircraft such as the RAF Jet Provost trainer, RAF Harvard trainers, the Pitts Special Biplane aerobatic display and various other light aircraft flying displays. At about 5pm there was a long lull in the flying display, with not much happening, and I thought the airshow was coming to an end. Then suddenly without warning and with no announcement from the airshow commentator, coming from the left in the distance, I could just make out a dark shape in the cloudy dull sky. As it got closer I was amazed to see it was a Lightning. When it reached centre point of the crowd line, where I was standing, the RAF Lightning went straight up into a vertical climb on full afterburner. The noise was incredibly deafening, and the ground where I was standing was quite literally shaking. Absolutely awesome, the sheer speed was amazing, will never see that again for sure. That RAF Lightning, certainly woke up the airshow crowd that dull cloudy afternoon, and me to as well LOL! 👍😎
I worked with the Lightning back in the 70s, it was an awesome aeroplane. One time a Lightning was having an engine test. It had no seat, no canopy and was being run up by an engineering officer. He inadvertently engaged the afterburners causing the aircraft to break free, hurtle along and take off with the Eng Off at the controls. The officer had only flown light aircraft before but was still able to do a circuit or two before making a safe landing.
To see a Lightening take off then go vertical is one of my earliest memories, and then to see it fly past at just under Mach 1, it's just a wow moment and it's stuck with me for 40 years. It would have be at RAF Chivinor during an air show. That along with the rumble that the Vulcan gave you when it flew low with the taps open. They are early and very fond memories of mine.
I lived at Finningly when the Vulcans were there, amazing aircraft and even more amazingly you can get to the point where you can sleep through one passing low overhead 🙂 I got to see the Lightning do it's take off special as well, off the deck, rotate and disappear straight up
Airshows then you could see the pilot in the jet as he zoomed past.. Unlike today when we are posted 3 fields away and need binoculars to see anything.
At Valley in the early 80’s saw this. Lightning at end of runway, engaged afterburner and released the handbrake. At 50 yards plane going fast enough to generate lift so it could fly and the wheels went up. The jet continued to accelerate but did not climb (still only sub 10 feet above ground). Jet raced to the end of the runway, tilted its nose and went up vertically. Last I saw of it.
Aside from the thumbnail and title snafu, i learned a lot from this video. I like seeing planes of all shapes and sizes, and of course vintage, and this one is right up my alley. A neat example from a bygone era.
My memories of the Lightning were watching the QRAs from RAF Leuchers take off and then go into an almost vertical climb on afterburners. What a spectacular sight
And don't forget, after pulling vertical, a true 90 degree vector, the Lightnings were still accelerating & could actually go past Mach1!!!! Lightning by name, Lightning by nature.
My favourite story of the lightning is the unnexpected flight in one by Walter "Taffy" Holden in 1966 ...i believe it left him sycologically scarred for quite some years after, Kudos to him he managed to get it back on the deck in one piece !
As a young boy I went to the 1962 Farnborough Air Show. At one stage a group of three Lightnings started their take off run together. I happened to be standing opposite where they lifted off, a second later they each did a flick roll in perfect synchronisation - the wing tips were really not very far off the ground. It really was a gasp out loud moment and not just for a young boy like me. They then climbed vertically until they were out of sight. More than 60 years later, I still have the at image in my head.
My Grandad worked for EE in the sixties & seventies at their plant in Liverpool. He died in '76. Everytime I saw a Lightning as a kid, it reminded me of my Grandad. He was one, of many, who built them!
You may be surprised to learn that the RAF staged dogfights between the last version of the spitfire (mark 14, I think it was) and a lightning in 1962, to determine how the lightning would fare against older piston-engined fighters. You might think it would be no contest and the lightning would win easily - and it could always escape if it used the afterburners. But remember that the rate of fuel consumption in afterburner mode is extremely high, so they might not be able to use them all the time. It was found that if the pilots flying the lightning didn't use their afterburners, the spitfires could still get into position to successfully score hits with their cannons and guns.
I remember seeing a Lightning at the Farnborough Air Show in 1974 (I was 7); it was so loud it even made the Concorde seem sedate (that Concorde is now at the Duxford Air Museum, BTW, and you can walk inside it). An iconic, amazing plane, from that glorious time before the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned 1957 Defence White Paper gutted the UK's aviation industry, probably with the help of copious behind-the-scenes US backhanders (see also the Avro Arrow).
As a Canuck Air Force member, I hear ya Bro. Both our countries' political members were mewling urchins when Yanks flash their dollars and might. Sucks, I know. I adored the Lightning and was able to have it pair up more than once with our CF-104 formations during exercises in the '70s.
Armament: The F1 and F2's 30mm ADENs were located in the upper nose, just behind the intake lip. They were deleted in the F3 & F6. However, 2 x 30mm ADENs were later retrofitted into the forward end of the enlarged ventral tank of the F6. The Firestreak/Red Top missile pack could be replaced by 2 x 30mm ADENs or 24 x 2" unguided rockets. The F2s were converted to F2As for use by RAFG; in this programme they were retrofitted with the F6's enlarged ventral tank to improve their endurance/range. However, they could - of course - have had the the same mod to fit the 2 x 30mm ADENs in the forward end of the enlarged tank as the F6s; this wasn't necessary as the F2As retained the 2 ADENs in the upper nose lip (this restricted the F2A to Firestreak only). Nonetheless, it was conceivable for the F2As to have been fitted with 6 x 30mm ADENs! (2 x upper lip, 2 in lieu of the Firestreaks and 2 more in the ventral tank) - what a punch that would have been. Red Top was a very advanced (for it's day) 'all aspect' IR guided missile, way ahead of its contempories, in performance and warhead. However, for a head-on shot, the target had to be flying at such a speed that it's leading edges were heated-up sufficiently for the very sensitive seeker to lock-on effectively. There was a project to retrofit the F3s & F6s with 4 x late model Sidewinders to increase the number of missiles available per engagement; which variant of the AIM-9 proposed I'm not sure - likely to have been AIM-9G.
I served on two Lightning Squadrons with 5 Squadron at RAF Binbrook between 1971 to 1973 and with 56 Squadron at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus 1973 to 1975. A really amazing interceptor in its time. I was a radar technician on them.
what about the camel, fury, hurricane, spitfire. those first 30 years of aviation were the most glorious, the true aviators... jets are great, amazing, fast, deadly, but the greatest planes were made between 1903 and 1935
When I was younger, I used to watch the Thunder City Lightnings taking off from Cape Town. I now work in the defense industry and have had the privilege of seeing nearly every modern fighter in action, but still, none even come close to the sheer spectacle of watching a Lightning climb vertically until it disappears into the blue.
Following retirement by the RAF on 30 April 1988, many of the remaining aircraft became museum exhibits. Until 2009, three Lightnings were kept flying at "Thunder City" in Cape Town, South Africa.
As an avid airshow fan in the 80s , I was lucky to be at possibly the oddest but quintessentially the most British airshow in 1987 , No5 Squadrons Farewell to Lightnings at RAF Coningsby. No5 were celebrating their move to the airfield , the transition to Tornadoes and were waving goodbye to Lightnings by flying an amazing demonstration including the diamond 9 all the time a typical village fete with Splat the Rat , throw the wet sponge at the CO , Lucky Dip , raffle and tea and cakes etc., were played out among the hangers .
Sir I believe you meant the F-18 as the RAAF never flew the F-15 as you said when Mr. Carroll flying the Lightning and the F-15. Brilliant and enjoyable presentation.
My father served in the RAF from 1936 to 1969 and in the 1960s was stationed at RAF Neatishead as a fighter controller and loved telling me just how quickly a Lightning could be scrambled from Coltishall, climb to 20,000 feet and intercept the reasonably regular visits to the airspace over the North Sea of Russian bombers testing the response of RAF fighters but this was not only part that the Lightning in my childhood, where we lived on RAF Horsham St Faiths we were quite often entertained by air sea rescue Wessex helicopters landing about 100 yards from the bottom of our garden but even better than that was the fact that there was a wrecked Lightning just over the garden fence which myself and my best mate, Jimmy Hodgson, treated as our favourite pay area, (in spite of constant warnings not to go near it), once we had removed the barbed wire used to prevent access to it. Many hours were spent crawling all over it and it only made seeing flight worthy Lightnings performing at air displays at Coltishall even more thrilling.
Went to an air show in the late 50's and a Lighting was there. It flew over us and then went vertical! Unbelievable!! Just dissapeared into the clouds!! Wow!! Never forgot it.
1968, Chesil beach ( Portland end ) stood on the bank overlooking the Naval base in Weymouth Harbour. A Lightning came over ( lower than 100 ft ) 'Buzzed' the Base and went vertical. ( middle of summer and no clouds in the sky) it just 'disappeared ' i was 10 at the time will never forget that spectical.
When speaking about the Lightning's various interceptions, you forgot to mention the most famous of them all. The Concorde passed overhead at supersonic speed and a Lightning, described by it's pilot as "a very hot machine" took off and caught up to it into firing solution range. Unfortunately, lately we've learned that the NEW Lightnings' biggest enemy is....lightning.
Not entirely accurate. Like with the U-2, the "intercept" was set up to favour the Lightning. They knew exactly when and where the 'targets' were going to be. The sad but simple truth is that while the Lightning had the speed to catch up to Concorde when it was cruising at Mach 2, it just didn't have the fuel to do it in a real chase. The intercept by XR749 was a stern conversion intercept. Essentially, it was flying head to head to Concorde with an offset whilst already at high speed (easier to do when starting with a dive), then turned (converted) to end up along side its target. So it never really 'caught up' with Concorde, it was just able to 'keep up' for long enough to make a point, before having to break away because, well, fuel.
@@BrySkye you say that like there was any purpose other than to prove said point. They proved the airframe could chase down the Concorde. Fuel capacity can be expanded with drop tanks. You're splitting hairs over moot points.
@@SkunkApe407 Disagree. The original post implied a Lightning pilot just happened to see a Mach 2 Concorde way up above, went after it and caught up in a pure stern chase whilst climbing. That scenario is unlikely to play out that way. In reality, it was all an organised event between British Airways and NATO to practice intercepting supersonic targets. As lovely as the Lightning was, it had severe limitations to achieve that blistering performance, and over-romanticising it isn't in the service of history. Context is always important. Also the external fuel tanks were available only to the F6 variant and severely reduced its top speed. They weren't really intended to be used as 'drop tanks' and only to be jettisoned in an emergency. If they were jettisoned without being completely empty, there was a serious risk of damaging the airframe. XR749 was a Lightning F3, so external tanks were not an option at all.
Whatever the corrections or refinements to that story, I've seen a photo taken by the Lightning pilot, of Concorde from the Lightning's cockpit, with an affidavit written by the pilot. Two of yesterday's aircraft that still command great respect and affection.
First time I saw a lightning was St Eval airshow... Lighting on the end of the runway, Hawker Hunter does a fast pass and climbs away at around 45degress doing slow rolls. Lightning sparks up the afterburners, releases the brakes ... very very short take off run, vertical climb, rolling slowing and (naughty) a sonic boom just before he disappeared in the clouds... an 8 yr old boy fell in love at that point... it's been a favourite ever since.
Jeremy Clarkson has a Lightning on display at his farmhouse in UK. Loved this fighter jet from a young lad. My older brother (RIP) built an Airfix model, painted and decals & I cherished it.
I grew up with the lighting. It flew over my house everyday. My dad use to take me to RAF BINBROOK to watch them take off and land. We only lived 15 miles from the base. Great memories off my favourite airplane and always will be.
I was fortunate to witness a Lightning display that was finished with a fully straight up climb from the display line until no longer visible on a clear day, I went to a few air shows in the 80's and do not remember anything else doing that.
My father worked on the Lighting, in Germany, in 1976-1970 and then in Saudi Arabia, from 1976-1980. My fondest memory are two 92 sqdrn Lightings flying up the runway, upside down, meters off the floor, then diving straight up, at the end of the runway, with full afterburner. I can still remember the roar!
it was always my dad's favourite plane, he even gave me his book that he bought about them when he was about to join the RAF. I was born shortly after though so that scuppered his plans. luckily I'm in the process of joining now :)
My grandfather, who sadly died several years before I was born, was in the RAF as a warrant officer in technical and R&D roles from the 1930s until he left sometime in the Sixties. Per my dad the Lightning was seemingly his favourite aircraft when he mentioned his work - which wasn't often - and one for which he was very proud to have been part of the 'team' developing and maintaining them. He was apparently very late home one night and, when interrogated by my grandmother on why, said he'd dropped a spanner into a Lightning's radar while working on it, and for obvious reasons couldn't leave until he'd managed to retrieve it. It's a shame they don't fly anymore. I would have loved - just once - to see one roar past and go into a vertical climb on full reheat. What a sight that must have been.
A lightning pilot once said the only reason they have wings is to keep the nav lights apart. If anyone is near a small airfield there's a gentlemen called Jake Jarrad who was commander on lightnings and he goes around telling hos story. A true gent, an inspiration and well worth a couple of hours of your time.
In 1958 I was 16 and I remember the Lightning coming on to the scene. It was so far head of everything else in the interceptor field as to be almost beyond belief. An amazing achievement with the tech available back then...
As a young boy, growing up in Norfolk I'd seen lightnings flying around, they were very fast and bloody loud. I remember sitting in my Dad's car in a file entrance having a picnic lunch one day, this was near RAF Coltishall. Suddenly, two Lignings streaked above at what seemed like hedge-height. They appeared from nowhere, going like the clappers and were gone before the sound of the planes caught up with them. Scared the bejeezus out of me. Fantastic machine in its day.
I loved the Lightning when it came into service... and I still love it now. regardless of its few fllaws, it was still one of the best planes the UK ever made..
There was an incident involving the Lightning and a Ground Engineer called Walter "Taffy" Holden on 22 July 1966. When performing a Ground Engine run, he accidentally engaged the afterburners and ended up taking it for a few circuits. The only aircraft he had ever flown before was a small single engine trainer.
I can still remember lightning XN728 languishing in a scrapyard as a display piece in nottinghamshire many years ago, it did hit me hard when I found out it was just sent to a scrapyard itself without a second thought to its historical value.
@@titchsterOn the jouneys to see family down south from Yorkshire,I used to always see that sad old Lightning sitting there,just wished I could have bought one small piece of it!
I remember that - it was a staple of our family drives up and down the A1. It was very sad, but still magnificent. My father was a "fighter controller" - ie a GCI radar plotter - for 74 SqLightnings in the 60s.
I remember seeing an RAF Lightning display at a local air show. The pilot made a banking climb away from the crowd with reheat engaged, thus pointing the noise at the crowd and giving everyone sight of the two balls of fire at the jet pipes. One spectator remarked to his family "You'd go as fast as that if your backside was that hot." Unforgettable!
The Lighting was designed as an interceptor, it’s mission was to intercept Soviet aircraft flying from East Germany, so they had a very limited time period to detect the aircraft and scrambled climb to altitude and attack the enemy. The lightning was two massive engines strapped onto a airframe
For a while I worked at ETPS at RAE Farnborough. There was an old test pilot there who related a story of when they had a couple of lightnings there that they were putting through their paces. He had a mate who worked in the tower, and they had just had a brand new ground radar system installed. The test pilot was sitting at the end of the runway waiting for clearance, and he asked his mate. “Where am I on the runway, then”. The controller immediately came back with a precise location. Soon after he had been given clearance to take off, he got back on the radio to the tower. “Where am I now then?” Again, ATC came back with a precise location. “Ah, but which way up am I?”
In 1973 i was playing on a beech at Redcar in the uk, i looked up and saw a TU 95, the red stars easily visable, At the same time 2 Lightening came over my head from inland and intercepted the TU95, it immediately turned back out to sea with one lightening on the Russians port wing, the other moved in front of it, they disappeared out over the north sea, its etched in my memory. I think the TU95 was testing our "golf ball" radar not far away at Fylingdales, replaced now with a newer radar for NORAD.
I was on 5 Sqn in early 80's as chief 'fairy' and we got to play with all the whizzy bits. It had many bad traits and I always felt the ground based control never being fitted would have been even more 'fun'. One aircraft was always snagged for having uncommanded pitch movement so when on a P* servicing I convinced the wing commander to let us 'fairies' strip the guts out of it. We found amd fixed many faults in the system. Yay! First test flight out of P*, uncommsnded roll! Argh! The 'Wire Bay' on the squadron was always a happy place and I've never seen so many Uckers boards in a crew room since. Great aircraft, great commaraderie and .... OK, it leaked but great times all around!
I remember when growing up going to the airshow at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall. The Lightning pilot did his display with plenty of reheat to deafen the crowd and finished off with a high speed pass down the length of the runway, hit the burners, stood it on it's tail and screamed skywards. One of the most impressive sights I have ever seen.
My friend was in Gutersloh in Germany in the early seventies, he was a radio op. He told me that on test scrambles they would regularly exceed Mach 1 while climbing at 12 degrees. Quite extraordinary.
This video has a few problems, the Lightning's mission never meant having enough aircraft & missiles to stop all the Soviet bombers. Rather it was to get off the ground & get up to intercept height very, very quickly where it would shoot down ENOUGH Soviet bombers to allow the UK's nuclear V-Force bombers to get airborne in sufficient numbers that they represented a credible threat to the Soviet Union. Likewise the blistering climb rate, limitted fuel capacity & weak radar were all cogent design choices. The climb rate was because Soviet bombers flew high & the UKxs radar stations would have little warning of bombers making actual attack runs. The limitted fuel load was because they weren't going to have to fly very far before encountering the enemy bombers for the same reason. And the weak radar was kept that way because they were always going to make intercepts under UK radar direction because, once again, it would all happen close to UK airspace if war broke out. For these reasons the Lightning was perfect for the times it was designed for. The massive cock up over TSR2 & the follow on debacle with the F111-k left the UK with a massive bill without any actual aircraft being delivered. UK defence aircraft manufacturers faced sudden, massive order cancellations resulting in some of the most talented engineers in the world being fired. Many got other jobs outside the industry, many more simply looked abroad & joined the UK to USA "Brain Drain" where they were hired by American companies. The result was that there was no money, a UK aerospace industry that was on its knees & no engineering talent left to make a replacement for the Lightning once its age started to catch up with it. These events sealed the Lightning's place in UK aviation history, the pinnacle of Britain's achievement &, ironically, this is only because aircraft development was so brutally cut off with no further "All British" successor. If things had been different the Lightning might simply have been a rung on the ladder that lead to later, much better examples such as the proposed Swing Wing Lightning 2 that was to be fitted with an improved radar, better engines with more fuel & weapons.
I used to work with an ex Lightning pilot. Used to love his stories of what they got up to... My favourite was about a ferry flight with a balbo of Lightnings and tanker aircraft on their way out to RAF Akrotiri. I forget how many times he had to refuel, the whole trip sounded hectic as hell.
Even on the ground it looked awesome. I was very young, but nothing in the 60's impressed me like the Lightning (I was an RAF brat). The Hunter looked beautiful, but the Lightning was a brute. I never did get my dream to join up as a pilot. The RAF and Britain could breathe a sigh of relief. No way I could have tamed that beast.
When i did my aircraft engineering training at RAF Halton in the late 70's we used retired "frightnings" as instructional airframes. Now at 5'4" im pretty small, i could easily slide into the intake, and sit cross legged, bolt upright in the jet pipe. The sergeant instructor warned me never to end up on lightnings...."why's that sarge ?" is said in my youthful innocence " "because you'll spend most of your time either in the front end, or up the back end" came the reply....😂
At 9:55 I think the two Lightnings are the ones you can see at the Midland's Air Museum near Coventry. The museum concentrates on jet aircraft due to Coventry and Leamington Spa's links with Frank Whittle. Well worth a visit!
@04.24 - Seeing as the British invented it, we get to name it - REHEAT ! - NOT "afterburner", which is an Americanism ! BTW, the Aden 30 m.m. cannon was a copy of the WW2 German R4M !
I saw my 1st Lightnings in 1962 doing a display at an airshow. There were few restrictions back then and one did a low, fast pass and pulled up into the almost vertical climb it was famous for. I still get a shiver now just remembering it. The F6 was still in service when the Panavia Tornado was the newcomer. Please change the thumbnail!
my son has a drift car the Nissan skyline, many decades before he was born, we used to live in Ash vale near Farnborough, and all the planes doing the airshow run, used to do their U turn over our village to head back to Farnborough. When the amazing and fantastic and bright silver! lightning came over, it had so much grunt it would literally 'drift' over our heads, I was only 9 at the time but these images are ingrained into my brain. A plane going sort of backwards, with this plume of smoke behind trying to make it go the other way. Never seen anything like it since!
Saw this beauty at an Airshow in the late 70s or early 80s - it was unbelievable watching the pilot turn it vertical and give it all the beans - didn't seem to treat it gently and boy what a noise.
If you want to compare it to newer fighters, since you brought it up. At 67,250 feet per minute the F-15 reigns supreme. However, that's not really fair. For it's era, the Lightening was extraordinary. Truly impressive and well worth a Megaprojects video.
They had Lightnings at RAE Aberporth in the 1980s, I think to assist with radar technology research. They would fly over the Cardigan Bay coast, then go vertical. Pole upright at full chat. I was not even ten years old, and just stood there in awe at the noise and spectacle. One of my favourite RAF planes into a Top 3 of Mosquito, Spitfire and Lightning in that order.
Sorry, as a former RAF engineer I can say... You are wrong about the Lighting's top speed, it never got there... It ran out of fuel before it stopped acclerating. It had one purpose and did it fantastically for its time. The fighter Great Britain ever made... I think a little bit of wee just came out :-). Yet another great video, and you have my thanks.
My Dad's Dad worked on Canberra and then Lightning, he did radio/radar electronics he left after the TSR2 fiasco to work in the US as did many others. My Mum's Dad also worked at Strand rd Preston. My uncle serviced Saudi Lightnings and later Tornados, We have many tins of bolts and linkages etc that my Grandad "Aquired" probably Lightning or Canberra. Preston's finest, don't forget the Deltic loco too another EE masterpiece.
I served on 5 Sqn in 1986 through to its disbandment in late 88. The aircraft was horrible to work on, it leaked fuel constantly and the kit was very old. However, after a 21 minute flight in a T5, I fell in love with it. What a beast of an aircraft, in every sense!!!
As a small boy in rural Essex in the early 1960's (64-66) I used to see these thundering overhead . At 64 years old and in Canada (we left England in 66) I can still vaguely remember them. My father used to work in missile guidance development at the time. Those planes may have been testing some of his designs.
53.178498,0.334388 (Google maps co-ordinates). Skegness Water Park. Next to the Lincolnshire Light Railway. There's one 'parked up' right next to the road.
The real beauty of this aeroplane can be experienced by standing near the takeoff point of the runway and listen as it rotates it`s nose to the sky and engages high throttle and afterburner on those Rolls Royce Avons , disappearing into the heavens like a Saturn V rocket . Awesome .
Lightning was the second Airfix kit I ever assembled myself. It hung from my ceiling on sewing thread for many years. I thought the Phantom looked cooler.
They had one at the Empire Test Pilots School Flying School at Boscombe Down, after a sortie, the pilots said they had never experienced anything like it, a true rocket ship with a climb rate of 20,000 ft per minute it was the nearest thing to riding a Shuttle Launch, one of the few aircraft that could catch and overtake Concorde. 😊
Our family were stationed at RAF Coltishall in Norfolk when it was home to 226 Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) which had Lightnings at the time. The performance was unbelievable. However, it was based on erroneous design specifications. Far too complicated which led to being a maintenance nightmare and quite unreliable. The ridiculously limited range (initially) is well known along with the high degree of difficulty in learning to operate the aircraft as a weapon. I don't know why they didn't just use the two seat version to split the workload. Doubt if the performance as an interceptor would have been compromised. Still, even as I get more critical, my boyhood memories of watching those things do their ear splitting 'vertical' thing, still makes it my favourite.
My memory of the Lightning was a take off, the aircraft went vertical, not almost but truly vertical and some seconds later there was a sonic boom as it went through the sound barrier, going vertical. Only two other aircraft impressed me to a similar extent, the Concord and the Vulcan, we thought it was an earthquake, there was a rumbling getting louder until the ground seemed to be shaking then coming over the hill were first two then another three and then more Vulcans in small groups, not going fast but quite low, the sheer power we felt through our bodies was amazing.
1983 i was at RAF Swinderby doing basic training .. a week before my pass out the monster turned up and gave a Arial display that was ... well ... drifting in a plane and out climbing a Saturn 5 rocket the whole camp stopped to watch ... to the pilot thank you
My birthday is in September and coincided with the air show at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire. I think it was my 11th birthday when the Lightning was displayed. It did a low pass and then went vertical. Impressed? Oh yes!
The English Electric Lighting was only intended to be in service for 8 years. It should have only ever been a stop gap to something better. The problem was our Government.
As a design consideration for protecting a small-ish island, the minimal range of the Lightning makes sense. It was one heck of an impressive aircraft by most measures of the time but, as alluded to, there is a limit to the benefit if raw speed. If your closing velocities are too high, you would require something like modern computing power to properly allow a pilot without ground support to be hands-off and still able to fight. It was this consideration more than any other which definitively killed the poor plane as a going concern. I'd love to see one flown in a modern air show alongside newer aircraft, though.
The bottom line: the Lightning was designed to be a bomber interceptor and it fulfilled that function extremely well. It was never intended to be a low-level strike aircraft or a fighter-vs-fighter dog fighter.
In 1965 I was a humble A/Crp in the RAF Police stationed at Leucars, Fife, Scotland. I worked out of the Guardroom from time to time. while on shift one day a civilian driving instuctor came to the window ask to see Fiying officer ?? I asked what section " He said He flys these things." So I called the apprpriate section. The sargent told me he would be over ASAP. When he arrive he looked my age I was just 19. Thanked me and joined the instructor in a mini for a lesson. I still cannot believe it.
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I got to agree with everyone else, the AI art is terrible please stop using it in your thumbnails that jet is doesn't resemble the lightning at all.
I don't have anything against AI art but it just doesn't work here.
The TSR2 was another groundbreaking British aviation project which was cancelled at the 11th hour.....
Get on to your basement dwellers to start writing 👍
You're going to need reinforced underpants with all the spankings the the thumbnail pedants are giving you 😄
@@Rachel_M_ they've already done a video on the TSR-2 on this channel
NOT AN ELECTRIC LIGHTNING IN THE THUMBNAIL
YOUR PEOPLE SCK
As others have said, that image is not a Lightning. Also, it was built by the English Electric Company, not the Electric Company, hence its name was the English Electric Lightning.
Ah yes the electric company, where you can get your everyday electronics like dishwashers, microwaves, and interceptor jets. Wait that's basically just General Electric...
@@triplestaff Which also manufactures jet engines.
@@rcknbob1 yes that was exactly my point. Though they haven't actually built their own airplanes, just almost every part of them...
It wasn’t built by the Electric Light Orchestra. M.
@@triplestaff English Electric did all that too... My mum used to have an English Electric cooker.
The video itself is interesting and insightful. The thumbail does the content a massive disservice. You can do better than this.
Agreed.
He's been doing it a lot recently, but not all the time... really weird.
It looks like an F4 phantom that was translated into Chinese then back into English
They are AI generated thumbnails evidently.
Looking back over the channel every single vehicle looks like an incorrectly composited mix of the intended vehicle and all of it's contemporaries, and the 'art style' has all the hallmarks with the gradients and high red and blue usage
They literally do it on purpose, just to get bird-nerds like you to comment.
It clearly works.
@@SkunkApe407 yeah, you're probably right. It's a bit gross, though.
They were certainly an engineering challenge. With Two tours at Binbrook I was there towards the end, being posted out a little while before the very end, having eventually worked in every area of my aircraft electrician trade across the years from the equipment bays to the flight line there, with the exception of 5 Sqdn. There was certainly a lot of job satisfaction keeping them in the air, and they were a spectacular joy to watch once they were up. I have many memories of the good, and the sad and not so good times I had around them. As such they remain in memory like old, much missed friends. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Be well everyone.
A rocket with a man strapped to it. That's how one pilot described it to me when I was in the RAF. I don't know how true it is, but I was once told that they couldn't establish a true ceiling altitude for it as it would run out of fuel before it got there. Great piece of kit. I loved it.
“I was in full control right up to releasing the handbrake” - English Electric Lightning pilot
'I was with it all the way 'till i let the brakes off' was the actual quote.
The Lightning, Buccaneer, Vulcan and Victor. We made some magnificent jets back then.
Honourable mention to the Canberra 😊
The TSR.2 would have been bloody awesome
Don't forget the Harrier...
@@bluesrocker91 definitely not. She has always been awesome also. The only true working VTOL. The Russian yaks were nowhere near up to par as a Harrier.
Buccaneer was a bit of a dog though
I had the pleasure of seeing a Lightening intercept first hand. It was a night flight in our F-111 heading back to RAF Upper Heyford at a reasonably high altitude. The controller asked if we minded a Lightening running am intercept on us. Of course I said yes. He called out the Lightening’s position, very low and a few miles at our 11:00. I did a quick check off our navigation, fuel and engines before looking out to get a visual. I picked up his flashing beacon easy enough. The son of a bitch was already halfway through his turn and halfway to our altitude. Very impressive.
I'm immensely jealous. I always thought that the Lighting was a beautiful yet odd looking bird, but its capabilities were insane. As a US Navy Aviation veteran, I always thought the Lighting was a better bird than the Phantom, second only to the Tomcat. It's a shame the Lighting didn't get modernized and a second lease on life. I honestly think it would have been a great NATO attack platform.
@@SkunkApe407 As an RAF veteran who worked with Lightnings, much as I love them I'd have to admit the Phantom is a better all round aircraft. Sure the lightning was an awesome interceptor but had limitations on range and armament. Having said the, Lightning is still my favourite aeroplane. There were plans to upgrade it, better radar, avionics and possible variable geometry but it only went as far as drawings. The UK was pretty much broke so no major updates and aircraft like TSR2 were cancelled. When the RN carriers were scrapped we inherited their Phantoms and Buccaneers, all future aircraft would have to be bought from the US or were designed in collaboration with other European countries.
@@poutramos4826 it's a crying shame, too. The UK really showed a lot of promise in the fighter/interceptor market. A little bit of help from GE and Lockheed would have done wonders for the UK's indigenous design and production capabilities. Not to mention what that would mean for the strength of UN and NATO forces. But it would make far too much sense for the US and its allies to produce the same kit, without the need for insanely expensive purchase agreements.
@@SkunkApe407 I agree 100% with everything you said.
@@poutramos4826 I feel the same way about the Canadian market, too. The Avro Canada Arrow was a spectacular bird. Our failure to help our northern neighbors develop an indigenous aerospace industry cost us and our NATO allies a lot of headway.
I swear, if the US tried investing in our allies, instead of milking them dry, we wouldn't be looking at situations like Ukraine and Taiwan right now.
I was at the West Wycombe aerodrome airshow in the late 70s. Imagine the scene, the flying display throughout the afternoon, had aircraft such as the RAF Jet Provost trainer, RAF Harvard trainers, the Pitts Special Biplane aerobatic display and various other light aircraft flying displays. At about 5pm there was a long lull in the flying display, with not much happening, and I thought the airshow was coming to an end. Then suddenly without warning and with no announcement from the airshow commentator, coming from the left in the distance, I could just make out a dark shape in the cloudy dull sky. As it got closer I was amazed to see it was a Lightning. When it reached centre point of the crowd line, where I was standing, the RAF Lightning went straight up into a vertical climb on full afterburner. The noise was incredibly deafening, and the ground where I was standing was quite literally shaking. Absolutely awesome, the sheer speed was amazing, will never see that again for sure. That RAF Lightning, certainly woke up the airshow crowd that dull cloudy afternoon, and me to as well LOL! 👍😎
I worked with the Lightning back in the 70s, it was an awesome aeroplane. One time a Lightning was having an engine test. It had no seat, no canopy and was being run up by an engineering officer. He inadvertently engaged the afterburners causing the aircraft to break free, hurtle along and take off with the Eng Off at the controls. The officer had only flown light aircraft before but was still able to do a circuit or two before making a safe landing.
Yeah, that's one of my fav stories of all time
Omg, talk about being thankful to get the rest of the day off to clean out your pants and get your heart rate down..
I saw a video about the engineer accidentally taking off. Incredible story and an incredible person.
The Imperial War Museum has a video on its channel about this
That would have caused a need to change the under garments .
Y'all got the wrong plane on the thumbnail
My first thought, pretty obvious mistake.
They always do it makes people engage with the video by commenting to correct them
Yippeeeeee!
Again.... They put the wrong plane in the thumbnail again.
But it's also very manipulative and puts off those of us who have always loved the channel. The channel and it's work deserves better.
To see a Lightening take off then go vertical is one of my earliest memories, and then to see it fly past at just under Mach 1, it's just a wow moment and it's stuck with me for 40 years. It would have be at RAF Chivinor during an air show.
That along with the rumble that the Vulcan gave you when it flew low with the taps open. They are early and very fond memories of mine.
I lived at Finningly when the Vulcans were there, amazing aircraft and even more amazingly you can get to the point where you can sleep through one passing low overhead 🙂
I got to see the Lightning do it's take off special as well, off the deck, rotate and disappear straight up
I remember seeing one ( or pair?) take off when I was at school, short run then tip up and gone, amazing. Air show at RAF Finningly iirc.
It was the 1970 RAF Chivenor Air Show. I was there as well. The Lightning made one hell of a noise. It almost shook the ground!
Airshows then you could see the pilot in the jet as he zoomed past..
Unlike today when we are posted 3 fields away and need binoculars to see anything.
At Valley in the early 80’s saw this. Lightning at end of runway, engaged afterburner and released the handbrake. At 50 yards plane going fast enough to generate lift so it could fly and the wheels went up. The jet continued to accelerate but did not climb (still only sub 10 feet above ground). Jet raced to the end of the runway, tilted its nose and went up vertically. Last I saw of it.
Aside from the thumbnail and title snafu, i learned a lot from this video.
I like seeing planes of all shapes and sizes, and of course vintage, and this one is right up my alley.
A neat example from a bygone era.
Nooo you didn't, lots of it is just plain wrong
My memories of the Lightning were watching the QRAs from RAF Leuchers take off and then go into an almost vertical climb on afterburners. What a spectacular sight
Did not the British originally call it "Reheat" ? (afterburners)
I'm sure it was called reheat originally
And don't forget, after pulling vertical, a true 90 degree vector, the Lightnings were still accelerating & could actually go past Mach1!!!! Lightning by name, Lightning by nature.
I saw one as a boy at an air show, seeing it turn on it's tail and go straight up, unbelievable power.
My favourite story of the lightning is the unnexpected flight in one by Walter "Taffy" Holden in 1966 ...i believe it left him sycologically scarred for quite some years after, Kudos to him he managed to get it back on the deck in one piece !
XM135. Now on show at Duxford
Is that the meamtenace guy who accidentally set off down the runway in the middle of fixing something?
@@Rachel_M_ Yep, that's the chappy and he did more than set off down the runway. The aircraft took off by itself and he got talked back down
The channel Paper Skies has a very good video on this! th-cam.com/video/MzlnMRwnzdw/w-d-xo.html
Yes I recently saw that very airframe at Duxford. It's an awesome story!
As a young boy I went to the 1962 Farnborough Air Show. At one stage a group of three Lightnings started their take off run together. I happened to be standing opposite where they lifted off, a second later they each did a flick roll in perfect synchronisation - the wing tips were really not very far off the ground. It really was a gasp out loud moment and not just for a young boy like me. They then climbed vertically until they were out of sight.
More than 60 years later, I still have the at image in my head.
My Grandad worked for EE in the sixties & seventies at their plant in Liverpool. He died in '76. Everytime I saw a Lightning as a kid, it reminded me of my Grandad. He was one, of many, who built them!
In a way, the English Electric Lightning was like the Spitfire: a marvelous interceptor, but with very limited range.
That’s what it was designed to be a point interceptor.
Spitfires were designed to shoot down incoming bombers as were Lightnings
Not even 'in a way'.
You may be surprised to learn that the RAF staged dogfights between the last version of the spitfire (mark 14, I think it was) and a lightning in 1962, to determine how the lightning would fare against older piston-engined fighters. You might think it would be no contest and the lightning would win easily - and it could always escape if it used the afterburners. But remember that the rate of fuel consumption in afterburner mode is extremely high, so they might not be able to use them all the time. It was found that if the pilots flying the lightning didn't use their afterburners, the spitfires could still get into position to successfully score hits with their cannons and guns.
@@lloydevans2900 Very interesting.
I remember seeing a Lightning at the Farnborough Air Show in 1974 (I was 7); it was so loud it even made the Concorde seem sedate (that Concorde is now at the Duxford Air Museum, BTW, and you can walk inside it). An iconic, amazing plane, from that glorious time before the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned 1957 Defence White Paper gutted the UK's aviation industry, probably with the help of copious behind-the-scenes US backhanders (see also the Avro Arrow).
As a Canuck Air Force member, I hear ya Bro. Both our countries' political members were mewling urchins when Yanks flash their dollars and might. Sucks, I know.
I adored the Lightning and was able to have it pair up more than once with our CF-104 formations during exercises in the '70s.
Armament: The F1 and F2's 30mm ADENs were located in the upper nose, just behind the intake lip. They were deleted in the F3 & F6. However, 2 x 30mm ADENs were later retrofitted into the forward end of the enlarged ventral tank of the F6. The Firestreak/Red Top missile pack could be replaced by 2 x 30mm ADENs or 24 x 2" unguided rockets. The F2s were converted to F2As for use by RAFG; in this programme they were retrofitted with the F6's enlarged ventral tank to improve their endurance/range. However, they could - of course - have had the the same mod to fit the 2 x 30mm ADENs in the forward end of the enlarged tank as the F6s; this wasn't necessary as the F2As retained the 2 ADENs in the upper nose lip (this restricted the F2A to Firestreak only). Nonetheless, it was conceivable for the F2As to have been fitted with 6 x 30mm ADENs! (2 x upper lip, 2 in lieu of the Firestreaks and 2 more in the ventral tank) - what a punch that would have been.
Red Top was a very advanced (for it's day) 'all aspect' IR guided missile, way ahead of its contempories, in performance and warhead. However, for a head-on shot, the target had to be flying at such a speed that it's leading edges were heated-up sufficiently for the very sensitive seeker to lock-on effectively. There was a project to retrofit the F3s & F6s with 4 x late model Sidewinders to increase the number of missiles available per engagement; which variant of the AIM-9 proposed I'm not sure - likely to have been AIM-9G.
I served on two Lightning Squadrons with 5 Squadron at RAF Binbrook between 1971 to 1973 and with 56 Squadron at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus 1973 to 1975. A really amazing interceptor in its time. I was a radar technician on them.
The LIGHTNING, The HARRIER, the TSR-2... British masterpieces.
what about the camel, fury, hurricane, spitfire. those first 30 years of aviation were the most glorious, the true aviators... jets are great, amazing, fast, deadly, but the greatest planes were made between 1903 and 1935
And the MOSQUITO@@danielrichardson4868
the harrier I would say only hit its best after MD modified it to hell and back
@@errantalgaeYou're right. I flew both.
You forgot the vulcan and the buccaneer
Thumbnail is the wrong plane
When I was younger, I used to watch the Thunder City Lightnings taking off from Cape Town. I now work in the defense industry and have had the privilege of seeing nearly every modern fighter in action, but still, none even come close to the sheer spectacle of watching a Lightning climb vertically until it disappears into the blue.
Following retirement by the RAF on 30 April 1988, many of the remaining aircraft became museum exhibits. Until 2009, three Lightnings were kept flying at "Thunder City" in Cape Town, South Africa.
Been there, seen them. Ex RAF, but too old to renew my license, I just got to sit in one in the hangar. Old memories.
As an avid airshow fan in the 80s , I was lucky to be at possibly the oddest but quintessentially the most British airshow in 1987 , No5 Squadrons Farewell to Lightnings at RAF Coningsby. No5 were celebrating their move to the airfield , the transition to Tornadoes and were waving goodbye to Lightnings by flying an amazing demonstration including the diamond 9 all the time a typical village fete with Splat the Rat , throw the wet sponge at the CO , Lucky Dip , raffle and tea and cakes etc., were played out among the hangers .
the excellent subject of this video demands an accurate thumbnail.
Sir I believe you meant the F-18 as the RAAF never flew the F-15 as you said when Mr. Carroll flying the Lightning and the F-15. Brilliant and enjoyable presentation.
Yep, was looking for this 👍🏻
Looking it up it seems the error is that Carroll served in the RSAF where he flew the F-15 rather than in the RAAF.
My father served in the RAF from 1936 to 1969 and in the 1960s was stationed at RAF Neatishead as a fighter controller and loved telling me just how quickly a Lightning could be scrambled from Coltishall, climb to 20,000 feet and intercept the reasonably regular visits to the airspace over the North Sea of Russian bombers testing the response of RAF fighters but this was not only part that the Lightning in my childhood, where we lived on RAF Horsham St Faiths we were quite often entertained by air sea rescue Wessex helicopters landing about 100 yards from the bottom of our garden but even better than that was the fact that there was a wrecked Lightning just over the garden fence which myself and my best mate, Jimmy Hodgson, treated as our favourite pay area, (in spite of constant warnings not to go near it), once we had removed the barbed wire used to prevent access to it. Many hours were spent crawling all over it and it only made seeing flight worthy Lightnings performing at air displays at Coltishall even more thrilling.
Went to an air show in the late 50's and a Lighting was there. It flew over us and then went vertical!
Unbelievable!! Just dissapeared into the clouds!! Wow!! Never forgot it.
Late fifties? The lightning didn't exist in service until 1960
1968, Chesil beach ( Portland end ) stood on the bank overlooking the Naval base in Weymouth Harbour. A Lightning came over ( lower than 100 ft ) 'Buzzed' the Base and went vertical. ( middle of summer and no clouds in the sky) it just 'disappeared ' i was 10 at the time will never forget that spectical.
When speaking about the Lightning's various interceptions, you forgot to mention the most famous of them all. The Concorde passed overhead at supersonic speed and a Lightning, described by it's pilot as "a very hot machine" took off and caught up to it into firing solution range.
Unfortunately, lately we've learned that the NEW Lightnings' biggest enemy is....lightning.
Oof size: X-Large
Not entirely accurate. Like with the U-2, the "intercept" was set up to favour the Lightning. They knew exactly when and where the 'targets' were going to be.
The sad but simple truth is that while the Lightning had the speed to catch up to Concorde when it was cruising at Mach 2, it just didn't have the fuel to do it in a real chase.
The intercept by XR749 was a stern conversion intercept. Essentially, it was flying head to head to Concorde with an offset whilst already at high speed (easier to do when starting with a dive), then turned (converted) to end up along side its target.
So it never really 'caught up' with Concorde, it was just able to 'keep up' for long enough to make a point, before having to break away because, well, fuel.
@@BrySkye you say that like there was any purpose other than to prove said point. They proved the airframe could chase down the Concorde. Fuel capacity can be expanded with drop tanks. You're splitting hairs over moot points.
@@SkunkApe407 Disagree. The original post implied a Lightning pilot just happened to see a Mach 2 Concorde way up above, went after it and caught up in a pure stern chase whilst climbing.
That scenario is unlikely to play out that way.
In reality, it was all an organised event between British Airways and NATO to practice intercepting supersonic targets.
As lovely as the Lightning was, it had severe limitations to achieve that blistering performance, and over-romanticising it isn't in the service of history.
Context is always important.
Also the external fuel tanks were available only to the F6 variant and severely reduced its top speed. They weren't really intended to be used as 'drop tanks' and only to be jettisoned in an emergency. If they were jettisoned without being completely empty, there was a serious risk of damaging the airframe.
XR749 was a Lightning F3, so external tanks were not an option at all.
Whatever the corrections or refinements to that story, I've seen a photo taken by the Lightning pilot, of Concorde from the Lightning's cockpit, with an affidavit written by the pilot. Two of yesterday's aircraft that still command great respect and affection.
First time I saw a lightning was St Eval airshow... Lighting on the end of the runway, Hawker Hunter does a fast pass and climbs away at around 45degress doing slow rolls. Lightning sparks up the afterburners, releases the brakes ... very very short take off run, vertical climb, rolling slowing and (naughty) a sonic boom just before he disappeared in the clouds... an 8 yr old boy fell in love at that point... it's been a favourite ever since.
Jeremy Clarkson has a Lightning on display at his farmhouse in UK.
Loved this fighter jet from a young lad. My older brother (RIP) built an Airfix model, painted and decals & I cherished it.
I grew up with the lighting. It flew over my house everyday. My dad use to take me to RAF BINBROOK to watch them take off and land. We only lived 15 miles from the base. Great memories off my favourite airplane and always will be.
I was fortunate to witness a Lightning display that was finished with a fully straight up climb from the display line until no longer visible on a clear day, I went to a few air shows in the 80's and do not remember anything else doing that.
I saw one at either a Culdrose air display, or St Mawgan, some time in the 80s. It was.. the loudest thing.
My father worked on the Lighting, in Germany, in 1976-1970 and then in Saudi Arabia, from 1976-1980. My fondest memory are two 92 sqdrn Lightings flying up the runway, upside down, meters off the floor, then diving straight up, at the end of the runway, with full afterburner.
I can still remember the roar!
it was always my dad's favourite plane, he even gave me his book that he bought about them when he was about to join the RAF. I was born shortly after though so that scuppered his plans. luckily I'm in the process of joining now :)
My grandfather, who sadly died several years before I was born, was in the RAF as a warrant officer in technical and R&D roles from the 1930s until he left sometime in the Sixties. Per my dad the Lightning was seemingly his favourite aircraft when he mentioned his work - which wasn't often - and one for which he was very proud to have been part of the 'team' developing and maintaining them. He was apparently very late home one night and, when interrogated by my grandmother on why, said he'd dropped a spanner into a Lightning's radar while working on it, and for obvious reasons couldn't leave until he'd managed to retrieve it.
It's a shame they don't fly anymore. I would have loved - just once - to see one roar past and go into a vertical climb on full reheat. What a sight that must have been.
A lightning pilot once said the only reason they have wings is to keep the nav lights apart. If anyone is near a small airfield there's a gentlemen called Jake Jarrad who was commander on lightnings and he goes around telling hos story. A true gent, an inspiration and well worth a couple of hours of your time.
In 1958 I was 16 and I remember the Lightning coming on to the scene. It was so far head of everything else in the interceptor field as to be almost beyond belief. An amazing achievement with the tech available back then...
As a young boy, growing up in Norfolk I'd seen lightnings flying around, they were very fast and bloody loud. I remember sitting in my Dad's car in a file entrance having a picnic lunch one day, this was near RAF Coltishall. Suddenly, two Lignings streaked above at what seemed like hedge-height. They appeared from nowhere, going like the clappers and were gone before the sound of the planes caught up with them. Scared the bejeezus out of me. Fantastic machine in its day.
I loved the Lightning when it came into service... and I still love it now. regardless of its few fllaws, it was still one of the best planes the UK ever made..
My Dad use to fix these when he was in the RAF - he bloody loved them!
There was an incident involving the Lightning and a Ground Engineer called Walter "Taffy" Holden on 22 July 1966.
When performing a Ground Engine run, he accidentally engaged the afterburners and ended up taking it for a few circuits.
The only aircraft he had ever flown before was a small single engine trainer.
I can still remember lightning XN728 languishing in a scrapyard as a display piece in nottinghamshire many years ago, it did hit me hard when I found out it was just sent to a scrapyard itself without a second thought to its historical value.
was a real shame
Was that the one at the side of the A1 near Newark? Such a shame the state it ended up getting into before being removed.
@@titchster that's the one, covered from nose to tail in graffiti
@@titchsterOn the jouneys to see family down south from Yorkshire,I used to always see that sad old Lightning sitting there,just wished I could have bought one small piece of it!
I remember that - it was a staple of our family drives up and down the A1. It was very sad, but still magnificent. My father was a "fighter controller" - ie a GCI radar plotter - for 74 SqLightnings in the 60s.
I remember seeing an RAF Lightning display at a local air show. The pilot made a banking climb away from the crowd with reheat engaged, thus pointing the noise at the crowd and giving everyone sight of the two balls of fire at the jet pipes. One spectator remarked to his family "You'd go as fast as that if your backside was that hot." Unforgettable!
Of all the airfix models I built as a kid the Lightning was my favourite. It just looked cool as….
The Lighting was designed as an interceptor, it’s mission was to intercept Soviet aircraft flying from East Germany, so they had a very limited time period to detect the aircraft and scrambled climb to altitude and attack the enemy.
The lightning was two massive engines strapped onto a airframe
For a while I worked at ETPS at RAE Farnborough. There was an old test pilot there who related a story of when they had a couple of lightnings there that they were putting through their paces. He had a mate who worked in the tower, and they had just had a brand new ground radar system installed. The test pilot was sitting at the end of the runway waiting for clearance, and he asked his mate.
“Where am I on the runway, then”.
The controller immediately came back with a precise location. Soon after he had been given clearance to take off, he got back on the radio to the tower.
“Where am I now then?”
Again, ATC came back with a precise location.
“Ah, but which way up am I?”
In 1973 i was playing on a beech at Redcar in the uk, i looked up and saw a TU 95, the red stars easily visable, At the same time 2 Lightening came over my head from inland and intercepted the TU95, it immediately turned back out to sea with one lightening on the Russians port wing, the other moved in front of it, they disappeared out over the north sea, its etched in my memory. I think the TU95 was testing our "golf ball" radar not far away at Fylingdales, replaced now with a newer radar for NORAD.
I was on 5 Sqn in early 80's as chief 'fairy' and we got to play with all the whizzy bits. It had many bad traits and I always felt the ground based control never being fitted would have been even more 'fun'. One aircraft was always snagged for having uncommanded pitch movement so when on a P* servicing I convinced the wing commander to let us 'fairies' strip the guts out of it. We found amd fixed many faults in the system. Yay! First test flight out of P*, uncommsnded roll! Argh! The 'Wire Bay' on the squadron was always a happy place and I've never seen so many Uckers boards in a crew room since. Great aircraft, great commaraderie and .... OK, it leaked but great times all around!
I remember when growing up going to the airshow at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall. The Lightning pilot did his display with plenty of reheat to deafen the crowd and finished off with a high speed pass down the length of the runway, hit the burners, stood it on it's tail and screamed skywards. One of the most impressive sights I have ever seen.
Got to love those vertically stacked engines in the AI thumbnail art...Oh wait.
My all-time favorite British jet
You'd think they would've shown the artist what a lightning looks like!
he uses AI, which is why it's completely incorrect
My friend was in Gutersloh in Germany in the early seventies, he was a radio op. He told me that on test scrambles they would regularly exceed Mach 1 while climbing at 12 degrees. Quite extraordinary.
This video has a few problems, the Lightning's mission never meant having enough aircraft & missiles to stop all the Soviet bombers. Rather it was to get off the ground & get up to intercept height very, very quickly where it would shoot down ENOUGH Soviet bombers to allow the UK's nuclear V-Force bombers to get airborne in sufficient numbers that they represented a credible threat to the Soviet Union.
Likewise the blistering climb rate, limitted fuel capacity & weak radar were all cogent design choices. The climb rate was because Soviet bombers flew high & the UKxs radar stations would have little warning of bombers making actual attack runs. The limitted fuel load was because they weren't going to have to fly very far before encountering the enemy bombers for the same reason. And the weak radar was kept that way because they were always going to make intercepts under UK radar direction because, once again, it would all happen close to UK airspace if war broke out.
For these reasons the Lightning was perfect for the times it was designed for. The massive cock up over TSR2 & the follow on debacle with the F111-k left the UK with a massive bill without any actual aircraft being delivered. UK defence aircraft manufacturers faced sudden, massive order cancellations resulting in some of the most talented engineers in the world being fired. Many got other jobs outside the industry, many more simply looked abroad & joined the UK to USA "Brain Drain" where they were hired by American companies. The result was that there was no money, a UK aerospace industry that was on its knees & no engineering talent left to make a replacement for the Lightning once its age started to catch up with it.
These events sealed the Lightning's place in UK aviation history, the pinnacle of Britain's achievement &, ironically, this is only because aircraft development was so brutally cut off with no further "All British" successor. If things had been different the Lightning might simply have been a rung on the ladder that lead to later, much better examples such as the proposed Swing Wing Lightning 2 that was to be fitted with an improved radar, better engines with more fuel & weapons.
I used to work with an ex Lightning pilot. Used to love his stories of what they got up to... My favourite was about a ferry flight with a balbo of Lightnings and tanker aircraft on their way out to RAF Akrotiri. I forget how many times he had to refuel, the whole trip sounded hectic as hell.
Even on the ground it looked awesome. I was very young, but nothing in the 60's impressed me like the Lightning (I was an RAF brat). The Hunter looked beautiful, but the Lightning was a brute. I never did get my dream to join up as a pilot. The RAF and Britain could breathe a sigh of relief. No way I could have tamed that beast.
Damnit Simon we need a live Sheath demonstration!!
When it comes to a pure interceptor, I’m a fan of the F-106. I was at a SAC base that had the last active duty Delta Dart Squadron.
When i did my aircraft engineering training at RAF Halton in the late 70's we used retired "frightnings" as instructional airframes. Now at 5'4" im pretty small, i could easily slide into the intake, and sit cross legged, bolt upright in the jet pipe. The sergeant instructor warned me never to end up on lightnings...."why's that sarge ?" is said in my youthful innocence " "because you'll spend most of your time either in the front end, or up the back end" came the reply....😂
0:55-1:02 looks like the intro to the most metal episode of The Brady Bunch ever broadcast 🤘
watching a Lightning take off after dark at Darwin airfield from the control tower as a teenager is a memory I do not forget.
At 9:55 I think the two Lightnings are the ones you can see at the Midland's Air Museum near Coventry. The museum concentrates on jet aircraft due to Coventry and Leamington Spa's links with Frank Whittle. Well worth a visit!
I once worked with an instrument technician who repaired a Lightning altimeter, it had jammed showing a height of 100,00 ft..
@04.24 - Seeing as the British invented it, we get to name it - REHEAT ! - NOT "afterburner", which is an Americanism ! BTW, the Aden 30 m.m. cannon was a copy of the WW2 German R4M !
I saw my 1st Lightnings in 1962 doing a display at an airshow. There were few restrictions back then and one did a low, fast pass and pulled up into the almost vertical climb it was famous for. I still get a shiver now just remembering it. The F6 was still in service when the Panavia Tornado was the newcomer. Please change the thumbnail!
I love the story of the ground crew engineer who accidentally took off, without a canopy.
The Lightning was a research aircraft adapted to be a fighter. It was a PITA to maintain and leaked fuel like a slobbering dog.
my son has a drift car the Nissan skyline, many decades before he was born, we used to live in Ash vale near Farnborough, and all the planes doing the airshow run, used to do their U turn over our village to head back to Farnborough. When the amazing and fantastic and bright silver! lightning came over, it had so much grunt it would literally 'drift' over our heads, I was only 9 at the time but these images are ingrained into my brain. A plane going sort of backwards, with this plume of smoke behind trying to make it go the other way. Never seen anything like it since!
Saw this beauty at an Airshow in the late 70s or early 80s - it was unbelievable watching the pilot turn it vertical and give it all the beans - didn't seem to treat it gently and boy what a noise.
Beautiful picture of the Lightning over RAF Mingeford on the thunbnail ❤
If you want to compare it to newer fighters, since you brought it up. At 67,250 feet per minute the F-15 reigns supreme. However, that's not really fair. For it's era, the Lightening was extraordinary. Truly impressive and well worth a Megaprojects video.
They had Lightnings at RAE Aberporth in the 1980s, I think to assist with radar technology research. They would fly over the Cardigan Bay coast, then go vertical. Pole upright at full chat. I was not even ten years old, and just stood there in awe at the noise and spectacle. One of my favourite RAF planes into a Top 3 of Mosquito, Spitfire and Lightning in that order.
Sorry, as a former RAF engineer I can say... You are wrong about the Lighting's top speed, it never got there... It ran out of fuel before it stopped acclerating. It had one purpose and did it fantastically for its time. The fighter Great Britain ever made... I think a little bit of wee just came out :-). Yet another great video, and you have my thanks.
My Dad's Dad worked on Canberra and then Lightning, he did radio/radar electronics he left after the TSR2 fiasco to work in the US as did many others. My Mum's Dad also worked at Strand rd Preston. My uncle serviced Saudi Lightnings and later Tornados, We have many tins of bolts and linkages etc that my Grandad "Aquired" probably Lightning or Canberra. Preston's finest, don't forget the Deltic loco too another EE masterpiece.
I served on 5 Sqn in 1986 through to its disbandment in late 88. The aircraft was horrible to work on, it leaked fuel constantly and the kit was very old. However, after a 21 minute flight in a T5, I fell in love with it. What a beast of an aircraft, in every sense!!!
As a small boy in rural Essex in the early 1960's (64-66) I used to see these thundering overhead . At 64 years old and in Canada (we left England in 66) I can still vaguely remember them. My father used to work in missile guidance development at the time. Those planes may have been testing some of his designs.
I love it haven’t seen one up close so might have to see where one is to go view it, see,ed like a great tool that wasn’t used to its full potential
53.178498,0.334388 (Google maps co-ordinates).
Skegness Water Park. Next to the Lincolnshire Light Railway.
There's one 'parked up' right next to the road.
I had a comment asking for this ages ago ! So excited for this vid!
By far the the best British jet interceptor of all time. Speed and manoeuvrability was her game that no other aircraft can touch to this day.
The real beauty of this aeroplane can be experienced by standing near the takeoff point of the runway and listen as it rotates it`s nose to the sky and engages high throttle and afterburner on those Rolls Royce Avons , disappearing into the heavens like a Saturn V rocket . Awesome .
Lightning was the second Airfix kit I ever assembled myself. It hung from my ceiling on sewing thread for many years. I thought the Phantom looked cooler.
As an Aircraft, it had blistering peformance...as a weapon system, it was outdated by the early 70s...But wow...we loved it!
They had one at the Empire Test Pilots School Flying School at Boscombe Down, after a sortie, the pilots said they had never experienced anything like it, a true rocket ship with a climb rate of 20,000 ft per minute it was the nearest thing to riding a Shuttle Launch, one of the few aircraft that could catch and overtake Concorde. 😊
Our family were stationed at RAF Coltishall in Norfolk when it was home to 226 Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) which had Lightnings at the time. The performance was unbelievable.
However, it was based on erroneous design specifications. Far too complicated which led to being a maintenance nightmare and quite unreliable. The ridiculously limited range (initially) is well known along with the high degree of difficulty in learning to operate the aircraft as a weapon. I don't know why they didn't just use the two seat version to split the workload. Doubt if the performance as an interceptor would have been compromised.
Still, even as I get more critical, my boyhood memories of watching those things do their ear splitting 'vertical' thing, still makes it my favourite.
Its just beautiful. I have a 1/48 scale Lighting being built on my hobby desk now.
Ah yes, the EE Lightning, known for looking almost entirely unlike the plane on the thumbnail.
My memory of the Lightning was a take off, the aircraft went vertical, not almost but truly vertical and some seconds later there was a sonic boom as it went through the sound barrier, going vertical. Only two other aircraft impressed me to a similar extent, the Concord and the Vulcan, we thought it was an earthquake, there was a rumbling getting louder until the ground seemed to be shaking then coming over the hill were first two then another three and then more Vulcans in small groups, not going fast but quite low, the sheer power we felt through our bodies was amazing.
The Lightning was a freaking legend, as was the Buccaneer!
1983 i was at RAF Swinderby doing basic training .. a week before my pass out the monster turned up and gave a Arial display that was ... well ... drifting in a plane and out climbing a Saturn 5 rocket the whole camp stopped to watch ... to the pilot thank you
My birthday is in September and coincided with the air show at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire. I think it was my 11th birthday when the Lightning was displayed. It did a low pass and then went vertical. Impressed? Oh yes!
The English Electric Lighting was only intended to be in service for 8 years. It should have only ever been a stop gap to something better. The problem was our Government.
I met a lightning pilot ...he quoted another pilot who said "I was in complete control, until I released the brakes"
As a design consideration for protecting a small-ish island, the minimal range of the Lightning makes sense. It was one heck of an impressive aircraft by most measures of the time but, as alluded to, there is a limit to the benefit if raw speed. If your closing velocities are too high, you would require something like modern computing power to properly allow a pilot without ground support to be hands-off and still able to fight. It was this consideration more than any other which definitively killed the poor plane as a going concern. I'd love to see one flown in a modern air show alongside newer aircraft, though.
It's job was to intercept Bisons and Bears before they nuked the UK. Speed was of the essence. Up, find, kill, home.
The bottom line: the Lightning was designed to be a bomber interceptor and it fulfilled that function extremely well. It was never intended to be a low-level strike aircraft or a fighter-vs-fighter dog fighter.
In 1965 I was a humble A/Crp in the RAF Police stationed at Leucars, Fife, Scotland. I worked out of the Guardroom from time to time. while on shift one day a civilian driving instuctor came to the window ask to see Fiying officer ?? I asked what section " He said He flys these things." So I called the apprpriate section. The sargent told me he would be over ASAP. When he arrive he looked my age I was just 19. Thanked me and joined the instructor in a mini for a lesson. I still cannot believe it.