Have you been struck by lightning?

[GengisKhant]

Just read a case of 4 pax jets from same company being struck by lightning on the same day..., and got to thinking that with all the experenced and time served mil pilots out there who access this site, there must be some who have experienced lightning strikes during their flying career. I appreciate that lightning strikes are more common elsewhere than in the UK, but can anyone comment on what they experienced, and what damage (if any) they sustained.

Thanks......:ok:

[airborne_artist]

The company has what used to be called a credibility gap - I do not believe their story.

[RayDarr]

Long true story:
Long ago, the UK did all its Air Defence identification from RAF West Drayton (The ADDC) Control and reporting was done at 2 SLEWC stations, RAF Boulmer and RAF Neatishead. This worked up to the Scottish border. North of that was RAF Buchan, still run then in a very WW2 manual way.
The ADDC identified everything, and the 2 SLEWC stations did their own thing for control, but for practice, and incase ADDC broke, ran their own identified air picture. In those days, the out stations thought they could do better than the ADDC. Sometimes they did, then there was this day...(new readers join here!)
There was no love lost between ADDC and Bolmer, and snotty Sqn Ldrs from BL would often give the poor recognition guy at ADDC a hard time. Anyway, one dark and stormy night, their Airships sent a signal that a practice penetration of the UK airspace would be attempted between blah date and blah date.
At this point things start to go horribly wrong. The Tracking guy at ADDC stands down the Staxton radar plotter for the night, extending Boulmer and Neatishead cover to fill the gap. Meanwhile, the recognition guy at ADDC is passed a flight plan on a Piper Aztec flying from Denmark to Humberside. He knows that this won't be seen low level, so throws it back in the pile and tells nobody. The ADDC then change shift, and the new crew are completly unaware of the Aztec.
Later that night, the Aztec sets out. The BL master Controller sees it as he has people at Staxton, and they are voice telling the picture to him. ADDC can't see it, as they have stood the staxton plotter down for the night, and it is too low for the others to see. "Haha! says the BL master Controller, a chance for us to intercept the practice penetration of the UK, so covering us i glory while throwing bad light and smelly stuff on those fools at ADDC"
So whithout more ado, a pair of Lightnings are pulled off normal training to intercept this track. Now for the bad news. The pilot of the chosen Lightning is night blind. Nobody of course knows this. The BL controller is not quite up to snuff, and confuses "Slow" with "Very Slow". The result is that the Lightning rushes up to it's target with lots of overtake instead of the expected 50 kts. Pilot looking out the window sees this at the last second and pulls the Lightning round in the fastest tightest port turn he can manage. Very sharp reactions, but, left a fraction too late. The Lightning strikes the port wingtip of the Aztec, bending it upward and leaving a tell tale paint scrape on his ventral tank. Lightning pilot feels none of this. Aztec pilot flying along fat dumb and happy is suddenly assaulted by a very loud state of the art RAF fighter and calls thus:
Eastern Radar, this is Golf Alpha blah blah, I've just been struck by a Lightning!!!
to which was replied:
Golf Alpha blah blah, I understand you have just had a lightning strike???"
(can yer see where we are going yet?)
Anyway, our hero, having missed on his first pass, and with the help of his less than accurate controller, goes around for another pass....
WOOSH!!! this time he misses, but by now the Aztec pilot, and his 4 oil men passengers are having a real bad day. Sure that someone out there is trying to kill him, he calls Mayday and diverts..... into Binbrook, the home of our pet Lightning and it's night blind pilot.
By now everyone was running for cover, and the BL people were pointing the finger at ADDC, who were just waking up to the fact that something out there might not be quite right
To cut a very long and painful story short, about 20 or so people ended up in the deep brown stuff for that one. How do I know?? Well, I'll let you work that one out for yourselves.

[Talking Radalt]

Then there was this day........
.......when MOD airlines actually HAD four pax jets in the air on the same day.

[charliegolf]

I was at college in the 70s witha bloke who was strick by lightning TWICE!




His name was and still is (no really) Jonathan Target.


CG

[Rossian]

Many moons ago at a small airfield in the west of this country known as Puckoon Field a Shackleton is wombling around the area doing (euphemistically) crew training when we get a call to RTB ASAP to do a "special" job!! It was to take an Air Officer and his entourage back to Northolt. Big Deal. As we thunder across the Irish sea at 143 kts towards the Wallesey NDB (at 1000' borrowing the beacons you understand). Kaboomah! BIG bright flash. Everyone sits up and takes a lot of notice. It was a purler - talk about eyes watering. OOOer missus. I mentioned casually to The Man's PSO that it was no more than one should expect. V senior Man, last minute changes of plan, crew less than grumpled - it was a potential disaster in the making. All part of the Mod's pension saving plan. Divine intervention it was. So how did he feel about being part of this farrago? Dead cool he replied "Don't talk nonsense - lightning never strikes in the same place ____ KABOOMAROONEY ______ twice (very faintly). Divert to to Valley, no compass no gyro feed in. And a night on the piss in Welsh Wales. Life was rarely dull on the kipper fleet in those days.
The Ancient Mariner
PS The "Pension saving" bit was an off colour reference to a fairly recent incident when 5 (yes 5) Air officers had perished in an Anson flown by a Polish Master pilot who was out of currency and whose A/C was, in a bit of a state shall we say.

[Yeller_Gait]

Genghis,

It is quite likely in these days of air travel that, say, if there is lightning in the vicinity of Standsted or Luton, then more than one of numerous pax jets that use those airports may well be struck by lightning, and 4 would not be out of the question.

From my own experience, as far as mil aircraft being struck by lightning, it is not an unusual occurence; Nimrods used to get struck regularly, particularly low level at night, and there have also been a few strikes on E3's. Usually not too much damage, an exit point on a wing extremity, then a check of the compasses to confirm that we still know where we are heading, and land asap.

I am sure that others have suffered more, but worse things happen at sea.

[jonesthepilot]

One of our crews gets airborne from Deci in an F3 and gets flash, bang, walloped shortly after take off. Back to Deci to find rear RHWR aerial blown off and all the stainless steel bolts and washers holding the pitot probe on were now welded together!!

[jonesthepilot]

One of our crews gets airborne from Deci in an F3 and gets flash, bang, walloped shortly after take off. Back to Deci to find rear RHWR aerial blown off and all the stainless steel bolts and washers holding the pitot probe on were now welded together!!

[jonesthepilot]

Ooops! How did that happen? Soz.

[The Swinging Monkey]

Ghengis,

I have been struck by lightning whilst flying on several occasions.
It was pretty common on Nimrods as Yeller Gait says. Depending on where you were in the aircraft, the flash could be quite spectacular!!
I remember two strikes in particular: on one we were hit on the port wing (little damage going in) and it came out of the starboard wing, where it blew the LORAL pod clean off into the N NOrwegian sea! (big damage) the second was getting hit on the MAD boom and it blew a large hole in the nose dome!
Only ever got hit once on E-3s, when coming in to Aviano one night and it put about 20+ little pin holes all over the fuselage.

Airborne Artist - why don't you believe their story?? I think it is perfectly feasable frankly, and wouldn't find it hard to beleive at all.

Kind regards to all
TSM

[Safety_Helmut]

Nimrod struck in Italy, nose radome badly split along bottom, canoe had most of one side missing, it split completely into two pieces when we lifted it off. I don't think it flew operationally for several months after that. Story in the hotel that night was that several of the crew needed fresh underwear. :uhoh:

The bit that always sticks in my mind was finding the 50 odd Forces Discount Brochures in my holdall when I arrived as part of the team to sort it out.

S_H

[bayete]

Inbound to Split 2000' many years ago in Albert experienced a massive flash and bang in the footwell. Nav was practically under the desk thinking that we had been hit by a SAM. Next calls went..
CO "I've still got control of the AC"
Eng "Pressurisation holding"
ALM "F**K me!!!!" as he had just seen a ball of light/fire exit 245 (flight deck bulkhead), travel down the centre of the cargo bay and exit port side by the ramp. He then giggled because he was looking at 60 extremely scared pongos all facing the same way down the freight bay. They were all pretty nervous anyway going into a suedo conflict zone.
Turns out lightnig bolt had hit the probe bounced of and hit the nose. Only damage was 2 small chips in the paintwork.

[airborne_artist]

TSM

If you go back to the orig source you'll see that there were some timing issues about the story management that have a faint whiff.

Also odd that the airline in Q was the only carrier to have any strikes, and almost all their aircraft in that region of Spain were hit.

Why were no other a/c touched? Divine providence, perhaps, or were the crews under such pressure that they couldn't go around the wx?

[The Swinging Monkey]

aa
Well, I have no idea why it was only that one carrier, but as you can see from above, it's not such an uncommon event.
bayetes comments made me laugh with the pongos!! mind I must admit that I too was pretty scared the first time I experienced a strike.
Kind regards
TSM

[GengisKhant]

Reason I started this thread was that when reading about the original episode re the strikes over Spain, it reminded me of an incident when departing Edinburgh in a Tristar, and if my memory serves me right, it was a C2. Was back in 1988ish, and we were operating out of Edinburgh rotating Scottish army units to M East. Just after t/o with the wheels on their way up, there was an almighty flash followed immediately by a tremendous bang.....! I was up in the front seating area, and the noise from the flightdeck was something to behold..., all forms of audible alerts were going-off. L/M with very worried look on his face was trying to assess if there was anything amis down the back. We continued to climb out and things quietened down somewhat.., with Capt announcing on the intercom that we had been hit by lightning. All systems appeard to be functioning OK, and we continued as planned. Pax were somewhat dumb struck, to say the least!

Though reading through the string and especially bayete's comments, we appear to have been quite lucky.

Thanks for all the contributions..., :ok: and still interested in any more experiences of this nature. Whilst sims will have a part to play in testing pilots to react to various emergencies with systems tripping etc, are there any specific programmes run that simulate lighting strikes?

[fatobs]

Not strictly airborne. but was sitting in a van eating bagrats (hence the name) watching the maintainers AF a Seaking in Belgium when it was hit by lightning. Disharged through the sponsoon and a maintainers to the ground. He was taken to sickbay which was then subsequently hit and lost all power. Only damage to the aircraft was a small hole where it discharged into the maintainers hand and the compass went a bit squiffy. Only good bit was there was a merlin next to us on dispersal and had that been hit it probably would have melted!
Anyway off to eat some more Bagrats.

[TyroPicard]

Was struck on the bonce by a Lightning aileron once... luckily it was stationary at the time, but it made my eyes water, and improved my lookout.

In a later life I was struck on consecutive flights .. DC10 out of a Texas airport one evening, ruddy great flash, loud bang but everything still worked so we continued to Gatwick.
Three days later at 3000 ft. on a Gatwick SID it happened again - but this time a minibolt jumped several inches from the cockpit structure to the white-knuckle of my index finger. That and the loud bang made me assume the foetal position for several seconds, much to the amusement of the flight Engineer...
I try to keep well away from thunderstorms.....

TP

[Pontius Navigator]

Got struck several times one dark and stormy night 'somewhere over the North Atlantic' minding our own business.

RT silent so we just remained on station and just kept taking the hits. Lots of loud bangs, lots of green light outside, but it eventually became routine and we suffered no discernible ill effects.

Loran was a bit trick but we just kept navigating using our sonobuoys.

[Yeller_Gait]

To follow up on Pontius's comments, I remember once, somewhere hot and warm, but at night, it was "suggested" to the crew captain that we continue to go on task, as the range was paid for and expensive.

Onwards we therefore went, against the captain, P1 and radar operators better judgement. Approximately 40 lightning strikes later, and still descending towards AUTEC, the decision to RTB was taken. Looking at the jet in daylight, it looked more like a sieve with all the exit holes, than a Nimrod.

[TruBlu351]

I got shacked by a big lightning bolt down over Florida in an F/A-18. That thing runs on electrons, so there were a few tense moments as I waited for anything electrical to die. Painting my way between some cells, but it lept out sideways!! No velocity vector would constitute a Mayday (HUD cripple)!

It was a very surreal experience, no I wasn't hypoxic ;) Came in directly from the nose and covered the whole cockpit. My arm hairs were perpendicular for the next few days!

Anyway, NO damage and no exit wounds.

Also had a maintainer get blown to the ground whilst on the flightline. Luckily he was AOK.

ONE more war story!! We'd tow an 80ft banner target behind a 1500' steel cable which clips to the rear of the jet for air to air gunnery. You guessed it, it also serves as the worlds BIGGEST lightning conductor. Needless to say, a few gazillion volts of white light blew it off the jet ;) Damn funny at the time!

[stbd beam]

I've been battered by lightning many times in the Mighty Grod, one sticks in my mind though. We got a jolt one time down in the weeds over the sea that didn't seem overly large, no blue ball travelling down the fuselage etc, and came home eventually, quite unconcerned. Told the engineers, who would then start looking for the exit hole, which we spotted from the bus leaving the ac. The 18 inch square smoking hole in the canoe (glass fibre sensor pod) on top of the rudder was suspected as where the lightning left!

The strikes on the Nimrod are often preceeded by a build up of St Elmo's Fire on the leading edges. I believe this is a static electricity phenomenon, which manifests itself with an increasing amount of pinpricks of blue light flashes on the wing leading edges and refuelling probe. Normally a sharp reduction in speed and/or ac attitude change avoids the ensuing belt, but not always.

As P. Nav indicates, the importance of the mission and condition of the Nav Aids / flight systems would decide whether you stayed or went home, as well as the subsequent mental condition of the pilots / captain! Often already questionable admittedly.

[diginagain]

I'm rather disappointed.

It would appear that southside has yet to have experienced what it's like to be struck by lightning.

Still, I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

[Yarpy]

:O A few years ago I was captaining a B737 on a sector from Heathrow to Paris CDG. To the north of the ILS for the westerly runway there was a long line squall running parallel to the extended centreline. Having previously been struck by lightning I was unkeen for a repeat experience. So, with the assistance of Paris Control I extended to the east to try and find a way through the squall.

Well, it seems I was being a bit too independently minded for the French.
Having motored about 40 miles downwind the sexy parisian female controller said:

"Captain, would you like to join ze uzzer traffic for a landing?"

I replied:

"Have you had recent landing traffic?".

The reply was "Yes, eet is okay".

So, I took this nice ladies word for it and accepted a vector to through the line squall for the ILS.

BANG A ruddy great lightning bolt through the cockpit and out the arse of the fuselage. The subsequent autoland was made with the radar paining fully red and amidst torrential rain. The engineer was fully prepared for a lighining inspection and we were delayed perhaps half an hour.

I spent forty minutes fuel trying not to get struck. Had I been more company minded I would have landed with everyone else.

My mistake? Getting out of bed in the first place !

Happy landings.;)

[lurkposition]

450 nm E of Bermuda, heading north (don't ask) FL low thirties in original RAF Albert c 1978.

Crew report little flames coming from all engine cowlings which soon changed to little blue sparks. Deemed not to be a problem as they were appearing on all windscreens. St Elmo's fire at it's very best. Nav kit in those days was self loading in charge of steam doppler. ADF, all comms, autopilot and main AI started to go on strike.
We suffered a couple of small strikes on the wing tips. Loadie missed all that as he was being chased (his words) around the empty freight bay by a small but bright area of ball lightning. This made it to the ramp, sulked, and withered away. Must have been overcome by the elsan fumes.

Compass gyrated somewhat and the synchrophasers acted as if on drugs.

Self loading nav kit pronounced "Ah! it's because we are in the middle of the Bermuda triangle, Does this mean we are to dead head home?"

Great CRM Petal!

[ 150nm later - beautiful calm night, all kit working fine. Upon arrival at Gander only slightly sooty marks on the wingtips.]

[havoc]

B52 training flight night low level over Wyoming US, entered a cloud deck and the cockpit lite up as if someone used the signal lamp right in your eyes. The accompanying loud bang got the attention of those that failed to see the light.
The Nav crew had numb feet, the Radar Navs only comment was the last time he heard that noise he ended up in the Hanoi Hilton (3 1/2 missions over Hanoi).
Upon landing the maintenance guys found a 1 inch hole in the noise and about 6 feet of trailing edge on the right wing splintered open.