Yep, hardly a new concept and it must have been an interesting exercise on an aircraft as demanding as an F-8, especially against a carrier. In the wartime environment the first Spitfire sortie could not have been easy either.
Time and technology have made the absence of a trainer variant a bit of a non-event but the F-35B in UK service will have its own challenges beyond initial conversion. The plan is for a serious percentage of day-to-day training will be conducted in the simulator rather than an aircraft. There are some technical and operational security reasons for extra sim time but the UK is also looking to save money by flying the aircraft as infrequently as possible.
There are risks with this, especially on the engineering and logistics side, as it is easy to call an aircraft serviceable when it does not do a trip. We may find that our first stressing of a fleet will come during war fighting and the true answer to our latent capability may be vapourware. It also makes nonsense of on-the-job training for frontline technicians and we have examples from other fleets where trade groups could do multiple tours without ever doing their primary role (eg sooties that have never attempted an engine change). It also makes keeping manning levels at the correct level for ops challenging when workload is so low in peacetime.
On the pilot side the long-term effect on air skills with so little non-synthetic flying is not fully understood. Some of us question the potential skill-fade several years down the line from flying training. Quite a few more of us have questioned the retention factor if we only give pilots single-digit hours per month whilst drowning them in sims and assorted ground trivia.