I was ATC supervisor at Farnborough on the morning of the crash. John Leng phoned from Brough asking about the weather as the Green Hunter, being fitted with an early 'fly by wire' control system, (and not called Kermit as far as I'm aware) wasn't cleared to fly if lightning was forecast; I told him there was CB activity forecast but not lightning.
I was just going off duty about 2 pm when they taxied out, unusually it was kept in 'A' Shed near the tower rather than in west or south area, but having seen Hunter takeoffs before (and experienced one in XF321 with Terry Adcock who I now know to have been lightningmate RIP) I didn't bother to stay and watch. The tower controller remarked afterwards that he thought it was unusual to see the flame of reheat in a Hunter, (the tower then being at one end of the runway) then twigged that reheat wasn't installed!
I only found out about it when I saw BBC 'South Today' that evening.
COEF gave us a rundown at morning briefing about the incident. Apparently Rod Sears had detected a lack of power just after he rotated and not knowing there'd been a catastrophic turbine disc failure almost severing the fuselage, tried to relight no less than 3 times before he gave the order to eject. The two pilots came down in the pool of burning fuel behind the wreckage and both had a case of 'sunburn' on their faces, which were the only exposed skin areas, but certainly neither was killed.
The aircraft was featured in an early '60s spy film starring that bloke who used to do DFS Furniture adverts - can't remember his name or the name of the film.
Last edited by chevvron; 24th Jul 2023 at 07:50.