I observed some interesting Lightning handling qualities from a different cockpit. During a Lightning weapons instructors course, I took a Harrier GR3 to Binbrook to fly some DACT against the students. The brief was that I was to take off first and head off out over the north sea. When I called ready, the first Lightning would come out and fly a 1v1, then when he had finished, we would reset and a second would do the same. I should have taken the hint as to what this would mean about the fuel loads of the aircraft.
When I was ready, the first Lightning came up, flashed past me at high speed a couple of times, and claimed a fully justified kill. He returned to Binbrook after about 5 minutes. Having learned a little from that first encounter, I jettisoned some fuel to increase manoeuvrability before the second opponent arrived. I started turning hard after the first pass, and quickly suckered him into a low speed fight that soon led to a level scissors in which I was getting the better position. On the next cross, I saw him apparently doing the sensible thing, getting ready to bug out as his nose sliced down away from me. However, as I reversed, I saw his nose continuing to move in the same yawing motion, as he entered a spin. We still had plenty of height, he had a recoverable aircraft, and I had a jet in which I could change the thrust vector. So I moved the nozzles to the braking stop, pointed vertically down, and did my best to get the pipper on the rotating cockpit for the film. As expected, the spin duly stopped after a couple of turns, so I had an amusing film to take into the debrief. What was not expected was the immediate entry by the Lightning into a spin the other way. I called height warnings for the pilot, 10,000 ft being the minimum for a spinning ejection. After a long pause, the aircraft recovered, and all I heard was a quiet call of "I'm returning to base."
I descended to low level and made my way back to Wittering as planned, landing with ample fuel. The debrief was by telephone, and the second pilot admitted to being quite low by the time he recovered full control.
It was interesting to see how quickly a funny situation can turn to disaster, but also reassuring to see that the Lightning was a aircraft that can be recovered from some extreme situations.