Former Lightning people?
Tim
You could contact Simon Manning (see below) who now flies for My Travel, Training Captain I think, looks like he might have an interesting tale to tell....
2nd December 2002, 13:02 #11 (permalink) D120A
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I am rather familiar with this one as I was the squadron’s engineering officer at the time. The squadron was deployed to Leconfield because Binbrook’s runway was being re-surfaced.
XS937 flew satisfactorily on its first sortie that morning (nothing like a successful sortie for establishing the airworthiness of an aircraft…), had a pilot-staying-in turn-round and flew again. On selecting undercarriage down, Simon Manning got two greens and a red, and after trying the usual rolling and pulling tricks to no avail, flew a number of times past Leconfield’s tower for a close look. The undercarriage leg was swinging half way between up and down, seemingly unconnected to its jack. We couldn’t see why it had become disconnected, but it was probably either a failure of the jack eye end (remember the Lightning’s main jack pulled the gear down and pushed it up), or, more likely, a failure of the jack attachment lugs at the top of the main leg casting.
It is unlikely any manoeuvre would succeed in locking a leg down in this condition – the aerodynamic loads on the wheel as it comes down forwards from the swept wing are in the wrong direction. And you cannot do a hammerhead stall and a tail-slide in a Lightning!
The helicopter was scrambled in good time for the premeditated ejection and Simon was quickly back at the squadron. Someone said in disgust “Simon, how could you eject into the sea and barely get your hair wet!” But it isn’t very pleasant seeing one of your friends heading out to sea to abandon an otherwise serviceable aeroplane, and wondering if the canopy/seat/parachute and all the rest is going to work. Thank you 202 Sqn.
In spite of an intense effort by the Navy, we never found any wreckage and that area of sea off Withernsea silts up rapidly. A few weeks later the RAF lost a Phantom in more worrying circumstances and the Navy effort was diverted to that.
Three years later in 1979, a Lightning F3 was abandoned near Valley (on a Missile Practice Camp) for an identical reason. I have seen the pictures taken of this aircraft from the gun camera of a chase aircraft and the trail angle of the broken undercarriage looks exactly the same. I believe the cause of that was found to be a fatigue failure of the lugs.
Later, when I was back at Binbrook again (1981-83), we had a modification issued for the main undercarriage that involved milling off the area near the main leg lugs to remove fatigue damage, and that mod may have been the fix for the cause of the 1979 accident. This caused a bit of consternation amongst the aircrew, who were curious how shaving metal off could possibly make it stronger! The answer can be seen if you take a strip of paper and cut a small notch in the side. Pull on the strip and the paper will tear with quite a small pull. But cut off a bit of the length of the whole strip, including the notched bit, and a good percentage of the total strength of the original strip will be restored. That’s why older aircraft with such mods in their airframes have “g” restrictions towards the end of their working life. 5g may not be 6g but it’s better than nothing.
Last, XS 937 had an incident the afternoon before it was lost when it had a double tyre burst and trundled off the side of the runway at low speed. The ground was like concrete (remember the hot summer of 1976?). Much was made of that at the time by Rumour Control but the view was that this had had no effect on the serviceability of the undercarriage. This was subsequently confirmed to me informally by the chief stressman at Warton, with whom I worked on a Tornado issue. Someone mentioned retraction tests in a previous post, but all they showed you was that the sequencing was correct of jacks, links, doors etc. You cannot in the hangar reproduce the air-loads on the wheels, nor the dynamic loads of, for example, selecting the gear down while rolling the aircraft. XS 937’s earlier satisfactory sortie on 30 July proved that it was serviceable and that the subsequent failure was something new. The 1979 loss proved what that was.
Hope that helps!
You could contact Simon Manning (see below) who now flies for My Travel, Training Captain I think, looks like he might have an interesting tale to tell....
2nd December 2002, 13:02 #11 (permalink) D120A Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Surrey
Posts: 90
I am rather familiar with this one as I was the squadron’s engineering officer at the time. The squadron was deployed to Leconfield because Binbrook’s runway was being re-surfaced.
XS937 flew satisfactorily on its first sortie that morning (nothing like a successful sortie for establishing the airworthiness of an aircraft…), had a pilot-staying-in turn-round and flew again. On selecting undercarriage down, Simon Manning got two greens and a red, and after trying the usual rolling and pulling tricks to no avail, flew a number of times past Leconfield’s tower for a close look. The undercarriage leg was swinging half way between up and down, seemingly unconnected to its jack. We couldn’t see why it had become disconnected, but it was probably either a failure of the jack eye end (remember the Lightning’s main jack pulled the gear down and pushed it up), or, more likely, a failure of the jack attachment lugs at the top of the main leg casting.
It is unlikely any manoeuvre would succeed in locking a leg down in this condition – the aerodynamic loads on the wheel as it comes down forwards from the swept wing are in the wrong direction. And you cannot do a hammerhead stall and a tail-slide in a Lightning!
The helicopter was scrambled in good time for the premeditated ejection and Simon was quickly back at the squadron. Someone said in disgust “Simon, how could you eject into the sea and barely get your hair wet!” But it isn’t very pleasant seeing one of your friends heading out to sea to abandon an otherwise serviceable aeroplane, and wondering if the canopy/seat/parachute and all the rest is going to work. Thank you 202 Sqn.
In spite of an intense effort by the Navy, we never found any wreckage and that area of sea off Withernsea silts up rapidly. A few weeks later the RAF lost a Phantom in more worrying circumstances and the Navy effort was diverted to that.
Three years later in 1979, a Lightning F3 was abandoned near Valley (on a Missile Practice Camp) for an identical reason. I have seen the pictures taken of this aircraft from the gun camera of a chase aircraft and the trail angle of the broken undercarriage looks exactly the same. I believe the cause of that was found to be a fatigue failure of the lugs.
Later, when I was back at Binbrook again (1981-83), we had a modification issued for the main undercarriage that involved milling off the area near the main leg lugs to remove fatigue damage, and that mod may have been the fix for the cause of the 1979 accident. This caused a bit of consternation amongst the aircrew, who were curious how shaving metal off could possibly make it stronger! The answer can be seen if you take a strip of paper and cut a small notch in the side. Pull on the strip and the paper will tear with quite a small pull. But cut off a bit of the length of the whole strip, including the notched bit, and a good percentage of the total strength of the original strip will be restored. That’s why older aircraft with such mods in their airframes have “g” restrictions towards the end of their working life. 5g may not be 6g but it’s better than nothing.
Last, XS 937 had an incident the afternoon before it was lost when it had a double tyre burst and trundled off the side of the runway at low speed. The ground was like concrete (remember the hot summer of 1976?). Much was made of that at the time by Rumour Control but the view was that this had had no effect on the serviceability of the undercarriage. This was subsequently confirmed to me informally by the chief stressman at Warton, with whom I worked on a Tornado issue. Someone mentioned retraction tests in a previous post, but all they showed you was that the sequencing was correct of jacks, links, doors etc. You cannot in the hangar reproduce the air-loads on the wheels, nor the dynamic loads of, for example, selecting the gear down while rolling the aircraft. XS 937’s earlier satisfactory sortie on 30 July proved that it was serviceable and that the subsequent failure was something new. The 1979 loss proved what that was.
Hope that helps!
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Warmtoast, yes, I'm sure that's the DVD I was looking, thank you very much indeed, you've added that bit more of happiness to my life! Thank you-Thank you!!! 
What a nice way to start a lunch break, quiet morning in the guitar shop, AC/DC playing in the background, nice lovely coffee & cheese savoury sandwich, a lovely chat with my girl before and someone finding the EE Lightning DVD for me to top it off.....Sweet & lovely-jubbly.
And of course, thanks to everyone else for posting some very interesting information about the Lightning, very interesting read indeed.
What a nice way to start a lunch break, quiet morning in the guitar shop, AC/DC playing in the background, nice lovely coffee & cheese savoury sandwich, a lovely chat with my girl before and someone finding the EE Lightning DVD for me to top it off.....Sweet & lovely-jubbly.
And of course, thanks to everyone else for posting some very interesting information about the Lightning, very interesting read indeed.
Originally Posted by Jaysi
Tim, Blackie (Ian) fies for Virgin
Tim,
My father has recently been in touch with the legendary 'Bugs' Bendall from 111Sqn at RAF Wattisham when the Lightning was first introduced.
My dad was the Corporal I/C the paint shop way back in the 60's when I was just a lit'lun, and Bugs came to the paint shop after flying and they both designed the lightning flash on the front of the Sqn a/c.
As the former display pilot, I'm sure he has many a tale to be told, I think all at Wattisham can remember when he went supersonic over the airfield and the windows in ATC fell out. Strangely enough, I later served there as an Air Traffic Controller in 1989.
If you haven't already got in touch with him and would like to, please drop me a pm.
Cheers
My father has recently been in touch with the legendary 'Bugs' Bendall from 111Sqn at RAF Wattisham when the Lightning was first introduced.
My dad was the Corporal I/C the paint shop way back in the 60's when I was just a lit'lun, and Bugs came to the paint shop after flying and they both designed the lightning flash on the front of the Sqn a/c.
As the former display pilot, I'm sure he has many a tale to be told, I think all at Wattisham can remember when he went supersonic over the airfield and the windows in ATC fell out. Strangely enough, I later served there as an Air Traffic Controller in 1989.
If you haven't already got in touch with him and would like to, please drop me a pm.
Cheers
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I'd love to read stories about furriners. I remember watching Saudis at Colt doing conversion. I think that there was a couple of Yanks as well. We could usually tell if it was a Saudi as they all seemed to use full reheat to get off the ground while the chaps all seemed a bit more relaxed. I talked to a Spam who flew the Lightning and he said that it was the hairiest ride he had ever had. "The most ediculousely over-powered aircraft ever built" is how he put it.
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Tim, did you receive an e-mail from AVM PS Collins (Rtd)? He's got plenty of stuff you could use. He's standing next to me as I type, ready to discuss this with you when you're available.
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EGGP: was the Lightning doomed by the Sandys white paper. No. Au contraire, Saviour Sandys saved it.
As Minister of Supply he had funded P1B prototypes in 1953, 20 Development Batch in 1954. Arriving at MoD in January,1957 tasked to make Defence both effective, as Suez had shown it was not, and affordable, which with impossible kitedreams in R&D it was not, he inherited an order for 50 (to be) Lightning F.1, which RAE/RAF saw as the last: J.Amery,SecState for Air was briefed 10/60 (by RAF) “we needed a Fighter Command to police the skies against intruders (not) much more(. Emphasis) on the defensive side (was with scrambling and dispersal)” The Move to the Sandys White Paper,M.D.Kandiah/G.Staerck(Eds),ICBH/KCL Seminar 7/88 pub.2002,Pp44/5. At MoD, then at MoA he funded 47 F.1/1A, 44 F.2, 20 T.4, and 70 F.3 (actual deliveries differed).
As Minister of Supply he had funded P1B prototypes in 1953, 20 Development Batch in 1954. Arriving at MoD in January,1957 tasked to make Defence both effective, as Suez had shown it was not, and affordable, which with impossible kitedreams in R&D it was not, he inherited an order for 50 (to be) Lightning F.1, which RAE/RAF saw as the last: J.Amery,SecState for Air was briefed 10/60 (by RAF) “we needed a Fighter Command to police the skies against intruders (not) much more(. Emphasis) on the defensive side (was with scrambling and dispersal)” The Move to the Sandys White Paper,M.D.Kandiah/G.Staerck(Eds),ICBH/KCL Seminar 7/88 pub.2002,Pp44/5. At MoD, then at MoA he funded 47 F.1/1A, 44 F.2, 20 T.4, and 70 F.3 (actual deliveries differed).
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For Tim who started all this.
My memories of the Lightning and those that flew them are pretty peripheral being a Navy Jungly pilot of great age. However I do remember that those that flew them seemed to be much closer in attitude to the FAA pilots than to their fellow Crabs!! I have a story of night flying at Valley being curtailed owing to a combination of 846 NACS and 11 Squadron having a birthday party in the mess to the accompaniment of Mk 8 thunderflashes, lighter fuel and a borrowed piano. I enclose a photo of the trophy,(made from burnt bits of the piano and a £5 note), presented to them in Malta when they had had their leave stopped for mocking the landings of the Air Malta 707. All Lightning history I suppose..........? Let me know and I will send you more.
I wonder if the trophy still exists? The piano certainly doesn't!!!!
My memories of the Lightning and those that flew them are pretty peripheral being a Navy Jungly pilot of great age. However I do remember that those that flew them seemed to be much closer in attitude to the FAA pilots than to their fellow Crabs!! I have a story of night flying at Valley being curtailed owing to a combination of 846 NACS and 11 Squadron having a birthday party in the mess to the accompaniment of Mk 8 thunderflashes, lighter fuel and a borrowed piano. I enclose a photo of the trophy,(made from burnt bits of the piano and a £5 note), presented to them in Malta when they had had their leave stopped for mocking the landings of the Air Malta 707. All Lightning history I suppose..........? Let me know and I will send you more.
I wonder if the trophy still exists? The piano certainly doesn't!!!!
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Thanks for all the feedback guys - been away for a while so I have some catching-up to do here! I'll read-through the posts and PM everyone as appropriate. Good stuff and thanks - keep 'em coming!
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Correct flash, before flying you had the length of your thigh measured to make sue you could keep your knees. Recall a USN guy on ETPS course in early eighties unable to fly in the T5 . It was the only british jet he really wanted to fly. At the end of the course he got special permission for one flight only , and guess what ....... main gear red on gear extension !!!!! Difficult decision , bang out and lose legs or risk leg collapsing ??? Luckily after a few fly bys the decision was made to land , turned out to be a sticky microswitch . Cant remember if it was before the T birds were all grounded due gear problems and then mods . Anyone remember what year that was ? Think we ferried ours to Binbrook with gear down for mods . Had a ride in XS422 in the last week before being grounded in 1987 . Now in the deep south being restored to fly again .
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There is one Lightning photo that I would like to see again it consisted of a very tasteful pic of a nubile young lady perched on the top steps of a 56 Squadron aircraft her only attire was a red and white chequered scarf !!
I belive it was taken about 1973/75. I was told that the photo shoot was instigated by the then ASF engineering officer. Anybody got a copy? For historical purposes only!!
I doubt if many groundcrew ever got much closer to a Lightning in reheat than the squipper sat at the end and side of the runway (Akrotiri and Wattisham in my case) in his Land Rover on brake parachute recovery duties. Normal landings no problem, aircraft taxies past releases chute ,quick squirt on the engine chute drops at squippers feet .
Take offs, touch and goes and especially late go rounds WOW Land Rover rattles and shakes, only protection for my ears was two fingers, no health and safety in those days.
As the brake chute was stowed under the aircraft it had a hard life the pack and auxillary chute often scuffing the runway on deployment .
On the odd occasion rigging lines could snap usually on a higher speed landing . This sounded like a rifle shot the broken line whipping up the chute and usally slicing up the canopy.
Twin steel (4 or 5 ton breaking strain depending on Mk of aircraft ) cables were attached to the rigging lines and clipped around the jet pipes and the end of the cable plugged into the base of the fin. Occasonally weakened clips allowed the cable to come free and become exposed to the reheat eflux . The heat burnt the cable which could cause them to snap on landing and then there was a couple of times on an aborted landing the pilot taking off again without releasing the chute so that all we got back in the section was charred cables and a melted nylon canopy.
Busy busy days
Great detachmets , one I remember was a 56 Squadron exchange with the Rictoffen Squadron at Witmund . It was the bosses last Lightning flight before promotion, He was leaving the detachment early and was flying the T bird back to Wattisham . The Germans must have got wind that something was up and several had positioned themselves on the roof of a bungalow type building. The beat up was fast and so low over the building that some actually dived off the roof.
A few years later I got posted to RAF Valley. One day when the Staish came into the section to pick up his AEA (flying clothing) I mentioned to him what a great beat up he had done at Witmund. Big Mistake!! as the CO of the RAF's No 1 fast jet flying training unit he made it more than clear that I had better keep it to myself.
Nearly 30 years later hopefully I am safe now.
Anybody found that photo yet?
I belive it was taken about 1973/75. I was told that the photo shoot was instigated by the then ASF engineering officer. Anybody got a copy? For historical purposes only!!
I doubt if many groundcrew ever got much closer to a Lightning in reheat than the squipper sat at the end and side of the runway (Akrotiri and Wattisham in my case) in his Land Rover on brake parachute recovery duties. Normal landings no problem, aircraft taxies past releases chute ,quick squirt on the engine chute drops at squippers feet .
Take offs, touch and goes and especially late go rounds WOW Land Rover rattles and shakes, only protection for my ears was two fingers, no health and safety in those days.
As the brake chute was stowed under the aircraft it had a hard life the pack and auxillary chute often scuffing the runway on deployment .
On the odd occasion rigging lines could snap usually on a higher speed landing . This sounded like a rifle shot the broken line whipping up the chute and usally slicing up the canopy.
Twin steel (4 or 5 ton breaking strain depending on Mk of aircraft ) cables were attached to the rigging lines and clipped around the jet pipes and the end of the cable plugged into the base of the fin. Occasonally weakened clips allowed the cable to come free and become exposed to the reheat eflux . The heat burnt the cable which could cause them to snap on landing and then there was a couple of times on an aborted landing the pilot taking off again without releasing the chute so that all we got back in the section was charred cables and a melted nylon canopy.
Busy busy days
Great detachmets , one I remember was a 56 Squadron exchange with the Rictoffen Squadron at Witmund . It was the bosses last Lightning flight before promotion, He was leaving the detachment early and was flying the T bird back to Wattisham . The Germans must have got wind that something was up and several had positioned themselves on the roof of a bungalow type building. The beat up was fast and so low over the building that some actually dived off the roof.
A few years later I got posted to RAF Valley. One day when the Staish came into the section to pick up his AEA (flying clothing) I mentioned to him what a great beat up he had done at Witmund. Big Mistake!! as the CO of the RAF's No 1 fast jet flying training unit he made it more than clear that I had better keep it to myself.
Nearly 30 years later hopefully I am safe now.
Anybody found that photo yet?
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Ancient Squipper also forgot to mention when the chute wouldnt release, and we had to wind the cable and chute round the tailplane. In the days before H&S that was a very noisy place to be.
Many an hour spent at the end of the runway waiting on chutes to drop
Many an hour spent at the end of the runway waiting on chutes to drop
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Never briefed on that. Leuchars had given up on Lightnings when I arrived in 1976.
Just followed the instructions of the guy with the stick sitting up front.
Just followed the instructions of the guy with the stick sitting up front.
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Kneecapper
If memory serves, there was a Leafy type JP , not long out of LTF, who was a rather tall young gentleman . Departed the a/c somewhere over the Humber estuary in the early 80's . I believe that was the end of his FJ career. Names are dim and distant , and I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
With regard to the brake chute, and wrapping around the TP , it was quite common during my time on top of that hill in Lincolnshire, usually in crosswind landings.
With regard to the brake chute, and wrapping around the TP , it was quite common during my time on top of that hill in Lincolnshire, usually in crosswind landings.
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A tight bit of parking........
Met some very nice people after this one !! Jengo, Sengo, OC 11, Harry Staish !!!! (all in pretty short order)
When my hat was back on and I was walking back to 11 a certain Mr Spencer picked me up in his mini and promoted me to Sqn towing examiner ! Funny old world.
If it had missiles fitted I would have been a bit dead....
HH2
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Bygone days
Scotty in full song ...... legend flem
[IMG]
[/IMG]The famous (infamous!) lem sqn jacket.....
Either you will understand these photos or you wont
(apologies, they're a bit too big I know!!)
HH2