Care to elaborate on that? Sounds interesting...

I grew up watching Keith 'Hooligan' Hartley in XP693 which was BAe Warton's chase aeroplane.

He used to have some serious fun over the Irish Sea & Ribble Marshes 'chasing' Tornados.

Happy,happy days
:ok:

If anyone remembers 74 leaving Tengah in the late 60s?,that was a superb mass display of tarmac lighting!!They man responsible for most of that now runs the Delta Hunters.Otherwise, you may have forgotten the late Russ Pengelley.In my day it was John Clift,who did the displays throughout the late 70s in a F3.The Lightning display always blew off the "Red Indians" or "Slivers" or any other Starfighter performance!!!!!!!

The Lightning was always the most impressive aircraft to see fly in the 70s. My best memory was standing on a haystack right under the approach in the field off the end of Binbrooks runway taking pictures with my Zenith E, then getting a b********g from a RAF policeman who came running over saying I had caused a couple of go arounds.Don't know if I had but it made me move.
D

.

Cannot really add anymore. I can only assume they tied up some sort of system whereby blue diesel was injected into the exhaust, on demand. Whether it was on both engines or not I wouldn`t know. Presumably it was a single seater. Unfortunately, I didn`t have my camera with me at the time but it must have been July 1969 as I was working on a fruit farm at the time picking strawberries!

Both practice displays took place at lunchtime (presumably a circuit embargo was in place for other aircraft)
.It was the usual seven minute display and the airfield and surrounding villages were covered in this blue haze! Strawbs stayed red though!:)

I've just stumbled across this thread after watching the most amazing program on Channel 270 on SKY, the SA Direct Channel of all places. It was called simply "Aviation" on the planner but seemed to be called "Thunder and Lightning" when titles came up and was all about Thunder City. Just thought I'd post so you can look out for it as SKY seem to repeat every few days/weeks.

I then ran a quick search and ended up here to find out the answer to a question I'd often wondered about, and one which they again mentioned in the show.

There was some fantastic footage of all TC's a/c, but the best bit was the Lightning's vertical climb, from both outside and inside. The rate that altimeter was going up at :eek:

It is a real shame that one won't ever fly in the UK. How great it would be to have a "Cold War Memorial Flight" with the Vulcan and a Lighning flying side by side. Oh well one can dream. If I'm not working when the twilight run happens in Feb, I may just pop along.

:)

Lightning
 

I worked on Lightnings between 1975 to 77 and must admit that although a technically challenging machine to work on, I still regard them as the 'Queen of the Sky'...Great to have heard that one of our T-birds is still intact in South Africa, not sure if it is still flying though. I still remember the guys polishing up the last one to leave RAF Wattisham with tears in their eyes...!!!

Nettman, this is a 7 year old thread - half the people you are replying to may have died of old age by now!

G

I doubt the world will ever again see an airborne Lightning.

More's the pity.

You never know .............. index

gasax, you beat me to it, hopefully soon :)

A flying T5 would be great, but it's a very long road from getting the engines running to having an airworthy aircraft.

I wish them well, but I'm not holding my breath.

I can't be bothered to read through a thread based on such staggering twaddle.

On a point of order and, frankly, basic third year literacy, there is no apostrophe in "Lightnings". Oh dear. :ugh:

Is the OP so scrambled he thinks the FAA oversees UK airspace?

Why can't this place reflect it's name, ie "Professional" pilot's forum, not the dopey spotter's forum?

There is indeed no apostrophe in "Lightnings" but neither is there one in possessive its. Greenhouses & Stones?

Any question about the Lightning - or a similar machine - will now be handled through the filter of two words: Hunter + Shoreham.

Though you can't say they aren't approaching the restoration in a professional manner - lovely spread of WIP photos here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/123533772@N08/

A friend of mine used to work at Warton. He remembers and early (might have been maiden?) Tornado flight accompanied by a Lightning chase plane.

The 'new' product came back towards the airfield flat out with the Lighning flying barrel rolls around it! (Allegedly!).

Bob lightfoot solo display
 

Thanks for resurrecting this thread, which was unknown to me: I loved the failed attempt at admonishing grammatical incorrectness by Wageslave above and Raymond Dome's subsequent correction-correction. I know the thread is/was about Lightnings (and also "Lightings" or "Lightning's" at various points) but it did make me smile on a rather slow Monday morning at work.

And found my answer
 

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....43612d6ba5.jpg
Steve, As requested Bob Lightfoot Coltishall 1969.in either XM189 or XM215. Both had the Union Jack on the fin.

Perfect
 

Having just seen the thread for the first time I'm slightly surprised that no one actually answered the OP's question. The reason why there won't be another Lightning flight in the UK is simply that it has ALWAYS been CAA policy not to allow civil registration of former military jets that are capable of supersonic straight & level flight. I think there may have been a very few exceptions for one-of ferrying flights out of the UK, but these were subject to extraordinary scrutiny and were heavily NOTAM'd.

Ads for the other comments - I really do love the idea that any civilian MU would do more intensive maintenance that front line squadrons. Some people cleary haven't the first clue on what is involved in keeping a 2nd generation jet like a lightning in the air. Best data I can find in the files here would be a first-line maintenance man-hours per flying hour number (preventive and corrective) of 112hrs, but that's based on a fleet of several squadrons and a flying rate of 210hrs/yr per aircraft (against a target of 305hrs/yr/AC). And that's only the 1st line mainteance man-hours - it excludes all the supporting bays and what we would now call "depth" mainteance. Of course you could strike out the maintenance associated with the radar, guns, missile systems and refuelling probes because these would never be used in a disply aircraft. But I'm under the impression that most of the mainteance burden of the Lightning was flight systems (flight controls, engine, undercarriage and instruments) plus the on-going aircraft husbandry (zonals and fatigue-driven SIs) so that's probably not as big a saving as it sounds.

But a display aircraft would do, what, 50-100hrs/yr? Much of that 1st line stuff would still occur at the same rate, so the maintenance manhrs per flying hour number would be 2-4 times higher. Lets make some generous assumptions - lets assume 100hrs/yr of display and practice/test flying. Let's assume that the maintenance requirement remains only 112hrs/flying hr, and that the additional maintenance hours of depth and bay maintenance (plus the increased rate per hour due to the lower utilisation) are offset by the lack of "military features" maintenance (that's unlikely, but what the heck). That would result in a an annual maintenance manpower requirement of 11,000 hours (six people, full time). That works out to over a million quid a year in maintenance man-hours alone, never mind parts, fuel, consumables, admin etc. Could the aeroplane even hope to earn that back in display fees?

I think not...

PDR

Whilst it's true that the uninitiated sometimes lack the experience to understand the maintenance support required for any aircraft type, it's worth pointing out that the RAF was well-known for its high level of over-servicing. It's probably not a great comparison to make, but the piddle-poor despatch reliability of the C-130K in RAF service (80% or less if I recall?) would probably have bankrupted your average airline. Conversely most "civilian MU[s]" (MROs we call then nowadays) or airlines themselves are able to routinely achieve 99.5% despatch reliability - and more - on aircraft which are of far higher complexity than a number of the aircraft being discussed here.

Thunder City used to manage and they did not have a supply of ex-Lighting ground crew.

But then Thuder City did lose a Lighting in a fatal accident.

Even in RAF service when new (ish), flown by well trained and current aircrew, and maintained by well trained and supported ground crews with a ready supply of new and overhauled spares they used to catch fire for a past-time. I think the main problems are design related rather than maintenance so even good aintenance can't fix that.

But they did in the beginning though, with Barry Pover living there initially, and as well as the late Baz Livesey (ex-BAe Warton) spending a lot of time there teaching the TC crew when they were re-assembling them out there after shipping from the UK, and finishing the rebuild of '451.

dook,

You obviously lived a charmed life. I imagine you had Bingo fuel problems though! :E

The prospect of a Lightning flying around UK skies nowadays, whether piloted by an ex-WIWOL or not, would be simultaneously thrilling and terrifying ... :O

Ex-WIWOLS are now far too old to fly the bloody thing anymore.

I reckon I might be able to take 2-3 g. :uhoh:

Not sure I'd want to see one being aerobatted but I'd sure as hell like to see one do one of those take offs again.

First time I can actually recall seeing one in the air was at the Biggin Hill Battle of Britain Day 1976. I watched this little speck in the distance growing rapidly and arriving more or less ahead of its noise... I assume it was a touring act rather than being based at Biggin for the show - bit short for Lightning ops?

'they used to catch fire for a past-time'
Somewhat harsh methinks. In the 70s fire warnings were admittedly quite commonplace but the majority were indeed warnings not actuals. The trouble was that the outcome of a real fire warning was potentially terminal as one engine had a nasty habit of 'infecting' its neighbour. The fire integrity programme in the mid 70s isolated the two engine bays and things were a lot better thereafter.

Ah - the reheat rotation. Happy days.

Kemble,
whist the aircrew were always trained not so with many of us groundcrew. 'learning on the job' was the RAF way of doing things back then. As for a 'ready supply of spares', this only lasted until the 'hangar queen' had been gutted of anything useful. As is usual with any RAF a/c the spares were anything but plentiful. The a/c was a nightmare to keep serviceable for all the trades and on 92 (F2A) along with jet pipe fires and other problems AC failures were common. Just my opinion of course but I did work on them at MSG and Leconfield.
I understand that EE regarded the RAF groundcrew establishment as inadequate for the task.

While more complex, a slightly more recently designed airliner is actually designed to be flown and maintained to that level of reliability. In contrast, the Lightning was designed to a specific task, with all other considerations falling by the wayside, and as a result will never be able to reach such levels of reliability. It is not just a matter of using a modern MRO organisation, it is the level of technology within the design that dictates the maintainability requirements, not the complexity.

I stand corrected.

Much as I'd love to see one/some fly in the UK again, in this modern world the 'safety case' could just never be made to stack up.

{For the ignorant (me), MSG? mono sodium glutomate?}

Kemble,
apologies MSG is/was Middleton St George. My Lightning experience was after working on Javelins (33 Sqn) and Hunters (92 before the Lightning). By far the easiest was the technically simple Hunter.

There used to be a link to the SA CAA report on the Thunder City crash on the Airmech website but it's no longer working.
It made pretty horrific reading.There was a fire in the lower aft fuselage which disabled the hydraulics & after finding himself unable to lower the gear when the pilot eventually tried to eject he couldn't.There were a number of findings,including the pilot using reheat momentarily after landing,I guess to impress the spectators and the canopy & seats being removed/refitted without the required checks afterwards.

A reheat fire on number one engine could easily lead to burning hydraulic lines and control runs.

It was arguably the most feared problem amongst Lightning pilots, including me.