Dans4c
49/50?
I note your query about rapid descents, which I quite often did. Two minutes from 40 grand, bucking against compressibility, but you had to have finished the landing wthin the next 2 or 3 mins or it was another 5 in IFR !!
I did one of those express descents once at Driffield ready to pop straight through a layer of stratus but luckily changed my mind when I saw treetops peeping up through the cloud layer
I had a Mark8 bucking at .84 once trying to dive past a trio of B47s (on their way to Russia ?)
I caught up but couldnt pass
'Twas quite funny really . I saw a distant vapour trail in the clear blue and chased the bogie for 70 miles or so. As i got nearer I saw it was 3 B47s in tight vic. There was a strict notice out warning us away from any B47 presumably something very special
I dropped between the contrails and crept right up to the leader unseen from the 2 hidden wingmen .
I was flat out probably .82 ...when I felt an uncanny itch on the back of my head (truly).........
So when i looked round there was one of the wingmen right up MY own arse .Thats when I tried to overtake by diving, but they got away
The Cold War pressure was really on then 10-12 hours training on jets , then a bit of gunnery ;and into no.1 Squadron with live ammunition standby scrambles. In 1955 I spent a couple of weeks in Nocton Hall hospital ,next to a senior officer with back compression from a bounced wheels up landing in a Hunter.(him not me)
He explained about the fear of Russia and the necessarily foreshortened training
We began to get Sabres from USA/Canada to improve interception capability( I brought several across the Pond myself, ... (the same endurance as the Meteor}
I didnt rate the Sabre as good as the Meteor for intercepting incoming bombers, would probably pass the inbound bombers a while halfway up the climb ,and have to turn and chase them all the way back to the coast before catching up. The Meteors could climb to height and meet them head on some 70 miles offshore( ( one attack pass only, easier than a quarter attack, but it had to be good!!)
I know the bosses did care about safety in training, (and all our flying was training for the real thing)
because I was called in for a chat a couple of times myself for getting 50 and 60 % hits on the drogue.
Or for a camera gun shot of a Fortress port inner engine filling the screen ; and even a bollocking for wasting an expensive towed target glider with its acoustic' hit' recorder at gunnery school, by shooting it so it fell to bits and crashed.
That lamp seems to start swinging with a life of its own, and it is teatime