Have you been struck by lightning?

[RayDarr]

Lightning Strike

Long true story:
Long ago, the UK did all its Air Defence identification from RAF West Drayton (The ADDC) Control and reporting was done at 2 SLEWC stations, RAF Boulmer and RAF Neatishead. This worked up to the Scottish border. North of that was RAF Buchan, still run then in a very WW2 manual way.
The ADDC identified everything, and the 2 SLEWC stations did their own thing for control, but for practice, and incase ADDC broke, ran their own identified air picture. In those days, the out stations thought they could do better than the ADDC. Sometimes they did, then there was this day...(new readers join here!)
There was no love lost between ADDC and Bolmer, and snotty Sqn Ldrs from BL would often give the poor recognition guy at ADDC a hard time. Anyway, one dark and stormy night, their Airships sent a signal that a practice penetration of the UK airspace would be attempted between blah date and blah date.
At this point things start to go horribly wrong. The Tracking guy at ADDC stands down the Staxton radar plotter for the night, extending Boulmer and Neatishead cover to fill the gap. Meanwhile, the recognition guy at ADDC is passed a flight plan on a Piper Aztec flying from Denmark to Humberside. He knows that this won't be seen low level, so throws it back in the pile and tells nobody. The ADDC then change shift, and the new crew are completly unaware of the Aztec.
Later that night, the Aztec sets out. The BL master Controller sees it as he has people at Staxton, and they are voice telling the picture to him. ADDC can't see it, as they have stood the staxton plotter down for the night, and it is too low for the others to see. "Haha! says the BL master Controller, a chance for us to intercept the practice penetration of the UK, so covering us i glory while throwing bad light and smelly stuff on those fools at ADDC"
So whithout more ado, a pair of Lightnings are pulled off normal training to intercept this track. Now for the bad news. The pilot of the chosen Lightning is night blind. Nobody of course knows this. The BL controller is not quite up to snuff, and confuses "Slow" with "Very Slow". The result is that the Lightning rushes up to it's target with lots of overtake instead of the expected 50 kts. Pilot looking out the window sees this at the last second and pulls the Lightning round in the fastest tightest port turn he can manage. Very sharp reactions, but, left a fraction too late. The Lightning strikes the port wingtip of the Aztec, bending it upward and leaving a tell tale paint scrape on his ventral tank. Lightning pilot feels none of this. Aztec pilot flying along fat dumb and happy is suddenly assaulted by a very loud state of the art RAF fighter and calls thus:
Eastern Radar, this is Golf Alpha blah blah, I've just been struck by a Lightning!!!
to which was replied:
Golf Alpha blah blah, I understand you have just had a lightning strike???"
(can yer see where we are going yet?)
Anyway, our hero, having missed on his first pass, and with the help of his less than accurate controller, goes around for another pass....
WOOSH!!! this time he misses, but by now the Aztec pilot, and his 4 oil men passengers are having a real bad day. Sure that someone out there is trying to kill him, he calls Mayday and diverts..... into Binbrook, the home of our pet Lightning and it's night blind pilot.
By now everyone was running for cover, and the BL people were pointing the finger at ADDC, who were just waking up to the fact that something out there might not be quite right
To cut a very long and painful story short, about 20 or so people ended up in the deep brown stuff for that one. How do I know?? Well, I'll let you work that one out for yourselves.