Here they are then:
Written by Wng Cmdr Brian Carroll, who at the time was the CFI with the Royal Saudi Air Force:
7 August 1979 dawned fine and clear, but then I was operating out of an air base in Saudi Arabia, so these conditions were the norm, unlike flying in the UK, where poor visibility, extensive cloud and precipitation had significant effects on many flights. One of our Lightning F.53s needed a flight test, nothing too demanding, more of a jolly than anything else. Following a normal cold power climb to 36,000 ft I headed south towards the 'Empty Quarter', planning to carry out a high-speed run and then return to base.
The tropopause was pretty high on that particular day and the aircraft performed extremely well, rapidly achieving a high Mach number. About now the thought entered my head as to what altitude I could achieve, so with nothing else to do I set about finding out. By then I was about 140 run south of base, having just completed a turn for home and still moving at around Mach 1.6 at 45,000 ft. Easing both throttles to full reheat, I lowered the nose gently and soon achieved Mach 2.1; a climb was then commenced, the speed holding remarkably well and the altimeter winding up in a most impressive way. I soon passed 70,000 ft, the aircraft showing no inclination to stop climbing. By now the sky was getting quite dark, a purplish colour, and earth curvature was beginning to be more and more apparent.
Speed was still close to Mach 2.0 and both engines were running smoothly with no sign of surge, something that can occur when the air starts to get thin, so any movement of the throttles needed to be very gentle. 85,000 ft was now showing and yet the aircraft was still easing upwards. Mach number was still high but, more significantly, the IAS was approaching the minimum below which the aircraft would stall. Very slowly the climb rate fell away and finally stopped with the altimeter reading 87,300 ft.
I had now cancelled both reheats (both engines were still running smoothly) and very gently the nose was lowered. As I carefully reduced power and started back down the slope, IAS started to increase, Mach number staying close to Mach 2.0. The situation was hardly normal in that I was close to the limiting Mach number and at the same time also close to the indicated air speed at which the aircraft would stall, so going down hill was not necessarily as simple as one might assume. A call to Air Traffic requesting a recovery was acknowledged, clearing me to 36,000 ft along with the question, 'Say your height'. My response was, 'Descending through FL 700'. There was rather a long pause, followed by the same question, to which I responded, 'Descending through FL 600'. Recovery continued normally for a visual rejoin, once around the circuit and a normal touchdown.
I related this flight to a few of the other pilots at the time and made an entry in my logbook to that effect. At such an extreme altitude the aircraft was on a knife-edge; either or indeed both engines could easily have surged and possibly flamed out and that would have been, shall we say, 'bad news'. A loss of cabin pressure could have proved fatal. Additionally there was always the possibility of losing aerodynamic control. In such circumŽstances the aircraft could have tumbled, with every chance of a total airframe break-up (the tumble should really be described as roll/yaw coupling, allowing the aircraft to diverge from its true flight path - the result could have been wing drop, and with virtuŽally no aerodynamic control it would most likely have fallen out of control and broken up). Extremely delicate handling was a priority to ensure that this did not occur.
You may well ask then, why did I risk this by going so high? A difficult question to answer, but if I must do so, then I would simply say,'Why not?' Rather like people who try to break records doing free dives to extreme depths, or climbing ridiculously diffiŽcult mountains. Not that my 'high flight' could be compared with such achievements, after all I only had to sit there, enjoy the ride, wonder at the incredible view, and let the aircraft do the hard work. U-2 pilots fly higher on routine sorties, but for the Lightning it was something of a record and says everything about this great aircraft and the Rolls-Royce engines that powered it.
Brian Carroll was not the only pilot to attempt an altitude record in the Lightning. Flt Lt Dave Roome of 74 Squadron was determined to have a go in an F.6 while the Tigers were based at Tengah in Singapore in the late 1960s:
On 23 October 1968 I had the chance to intercept a USAF RB-57F, a highly modified version of the Canberra with a 122 ft wing span and 42,000 lb of thrust. This was in the Far East carrying out high altitude meteorological trials on turbulence prior to Concorde starting commercial services to Singapore. The abilities of this aircraft in the upper atmosphere were demonstrated graphically when its pilot climbed 15,000 ft, from 65,000 ft to 80,000 ft, while flying a 180-degree turn! He was surprised that the Lightning
which carried out the next intercept overtook him in a descent through his altitude and he advised us that his last run would take some time to set up. This time his altitude was into six figures and he was safe, but it left me with the thought that out in the tropics, where the tropopause is in the order of 55,000 ft, the Lightning could probably achieve above 85,000 ft. I was deterŽmined to try it when I got the chance, and some months later that chance arrived.
There was a Victor tanker returning from Hong Kong and offering about 17,000 lb of fuel to us: I went up the east coast of Malaysia almost to the Thai border and filled to full. I was now left with a straight run home and the east coast was the area in which we could fly supersonic. Initially I climbed to 50,000 ft, which was the subsonic service ceiling of the aircraft, and there I accelerated to 2.0 M and started a zoom climb, selecting about 16 degrees of pitch. I levelled off at 65,000 ft and let the aircraft have its head, reaching 2.2 M before once again flying the same zoom profile. This time I held the climb attitude, though to do so required an increasing amount of aft stick as the reduction in downwash over the tail increased. Eventually the stick reached the back stops and I gently topped out, 200 ft short of 88,000 ft. From there, Singapore looked tiny and I convinced myself that I could see from the very southern tip of Vietnam over my left shoulder, past the Borneo coast in my 11 o'clock, to the western coast of Sumatra on my right-hand side. The sky was pitch black above me and all of a sudden I realized that I did not belong here. With idle/idle set, I started a glide back down which would have carried me over 150 miles. A marvellous example of the Lightning's sheer performance, though the pressure jerkin, g-suit and normal oxygen mask would not have been sufficient had the pressurization failed.
Throughout this chapter a number of references have been made to the tropopause. In the following brief summary, Brian Carroll explains its significance:
Although the composition of the atmosphere remains unchanged up to great heights, certain conditions do change. Lower layers are identified in the first instance by the rate of change of temperature with height, the rate of fall continues regularly to a height of several kilometres which depends mainly on latitude - this layer is called the troposphere, its upper boundary is the tropopause. The height of the tropopause varies as stated with latitude, seasons and general weather conditions. Normally it is lower in arctic regions in winter and highest in tropical and equatorial regions. Since air is compressible, the troposphere contains much the greater part, around three-quarters, of the whole mass of the atmosphere. The fact that the tropopause was high on the day I managed to achieve such an altitude was assisted by these condiŽtions, thicker air was available to a higher level than usual, so the engines were able to function better than one would normally expect.
Taken from the excellent book:
LIGHTNING: From the cockpit (Flying the supersonic legend) by Peter Cayhill
Pub: Pen and Sword 2004
ISBN:1 84415 082 8
All conditions acknowledged as the right of the author and posted here for information only.