Originally Posted by
Fonsini
...lost in a sandstorm and ran out of fuel and crashed...
This was in the early 80s if I'm not mistaken. The story I heard at Tabuk was that the pair had returned to base from a normal sortie to find a pretty bad sandstorm under way. They shut down one engine each and plodded around in the circuit waiting for the sandstorm to clear. Inevitably the sandstorm didn't clear and fuel became low so they pointed the aircraft away from populated areas (not too difficult) and ejected.
There were civil airports not too far away (eg Al Jouf) but they weren't really suitable for Lightnings. The flight duration was around 2 hr 20 min if my memory serves, which someone said was as long as any Lightning flight they were aware of.
EAP