Interesting thread. I've just checked my log book & during my SAR days, my crew & I hauled a Lightning pilot out of the North Sea on 26 May 1971 at night. We did not really come to a classic hover but scooped him up on the run. Seems this one has missed the stats?
Oooops.....quite right
That would have been the RCAF exchange pilot that parted company with XS902 after a re-heat fire about 9m east of Spurn Head.
As I'm sure everyone knows, Lightnings were absolute pigs to maintain, and the wonder was that they didn't just explode when the power went on, what with all the fuel leaking everywhere and the AVPIN.
Well one of your old 74 Sqn charges is currently the only airworthy Lightning F.6 in the world
XR773/F, then the 'personal' mount of a current well known civilian Hunter display pilot
is with Mike Beachyhead's ThunderCity operation down at Cape Town International
The last one--and the worst sight I've ever seen in my life--was an F6 which got the fuel management wrong and took off from Tengah with the c of g too far back. It looked at first as though he was trying a rotation take off, so we all stopped to look. He swung over backwards at a sickening rate, was forced into a loop at about 300 ft., and ploughed straight into the kampong on the other side of the road. Ejection was initiated (we all saw the canopy come off), but the seat went straight into a tree......
27th July 1970, XS930. There's a detailed paragraph written by one of 74's other pilots, of this incident, in Martin Bowmans book on the Lightning.