Slightly off topic, but I was on detachment to Luqa with Strike Wing from Akrotiri in (about) 1967, when a Lightning came to grief (no fatality) on the runway (or off the runway for purists!).
I was on a pan at the time, waiting for a returning Canberra B16, which had just landed (at night). A slap on my shoulder by a colleague, alerted me to a Lightning which was also landing at the same time behind the B16. His tail chute was fully deployed and he was rapidly catching the oblivious B16. When the Lightning was no more than two hundred yards from the B16 and still motoring, he suddenly applied full reheat and took off again with tattered tail chute streaming behind. On his next landing, minus chute, he continued rapidly off the end of the runway into the scenery. Cat 5 one Lightning. Seem to remember a write up in Air Clues, but don’t remember the conclusion.
249sqn did lose a Canberra around that time, when a B15 flew into a mountian in sardinia (?). Three crew were lost.
Last edited by Lukeafb1; 8th Sep 2003 at 20:38.