Originally Posted by FlyingLawyer
I was due to have a flight at the end of the 1983 display season with Mike Thompson, then the RAF's Lightning display pilot - and probably the best in my (amateur) opinion.
Tragically, Mike didn't make it the end of the season.
I witnessed Mike doing a superb display at the BAe Hatfield families day a few weeks before that fateful August day at Scarborough, and he'd won the solo trophy at RIAT that year too IIRC.
The solo display at Hatfield was the best Lightning aero's display I'd seen since the legendary displays of Pete Chapman in the white tailed F.3 in the last year of the OCU.