I think few posters here realise that the Lightning led the world in performance at the time of first production. Yes, it was a prototype and only little developed but it out-performed just about every other fighter in its day.
In its later development models the shortage of fuel was not such a critical issue for point defence but it never got either a state of the art radar or a good missile nor did it carry enough of them.
Just to put its qualities into perspective, the RAF did not get a fighter that could match either its rate of climb or its' service ceiling until Typhoon appeared some 40-odd years later. Nor did they get anything else so shiny!