Originally Posted by
BEagle
ORAC, that was one very chastened Lightning pilot who was a good mate back then.
The Lightning had some form of airbrake protection system which prevented extension at 650? KIAS (I'm sure a WIWOL will confirm). So when...let's call him John...saw the nadir star slowly rotating in the centre of a sea of black the Attitude Indicator, he knew he was going vertically downwards at over the airbrake limit. Or "It was getting a bit noisy, the AI was all black and the little star was going round and round" as he put it.
He closed the throttles, selected the airbrakes and pulled as hard as he could to the nearest horizon..... The next thing he remembered was seeing the AI winding up through about 700 ft with the IAS falling through 200 KIAS with both at idle (ish) and the airbrakes now out. So, both burners in, airbrakes in and home cautiously to Binbrook.
It later transpired that he'd pulled to over 10 g (13 g was rumoured) and the aircraft had held together - somewhat paradoxically this later allowed BWoS to re-examine the Lightning fatigue life and to extend it!
And this very Lightning (XS898) ended up being one of the pair that was destined to fly the very last RAF Lightning sortie, when it and, IIRC, XS923, were the last 2 x a/c to take off from Binners to be delivered to Cranfield some 8 years almost after the above incident.