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F6 on APC in Akrotiri shot himself down. Very neat trick, I thought, took real skill to do that. We had a Jag nearly do that, only a lot slower... so the rounds just grazed the canopy as they overtook it... |
Wonderful stories guys.
An extraordinary aircraft. Mike Hale's bouncing of a U2 at FL88 is still amazing... as is Brian Carroll reaching FL87 over Saudi. I see Brian Carroll is no longer with us - does Mike Hale ever frequent these forums? |
Another driver in an F6 had a close encounter with the North Sea and ended up pulling an estimated 13½G pull up After throttling back, all he could do was to PULL - and he was well over the IAS limit for airbrakes, so they were locked in... It went 'rather black'; when he woke up he was below 1000 ft in a shallow climb with the IAS rapidly decaying. He then sorted himself out, did a low speed handling check and flew back rather cautiously to Binbrook for an underwear change. He told us that he had lace marks from his g-suit on his legs for days afterwards. |
BEagle - you referred to Skywatch movie earlier.
Can't find reference on the web... could you point me in the right direction? |
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Hale's figment of imagination .... Post #42 (Lightning versus U-2)
#42 Wonderful stories guys. An extraordinary aircraft. Mike Hale's bouncing of a U2 at FL88 is still amazing... Wonderful & enjoyable stories they are. Great fun to reminisce. I flew the Lightning Mk3 ...(the hotrod version of the Lightning with the greatest power to weight ratio). I also flew the Lockheed U-2C ...(the hotrod version of the U-2 with the greatest power to weight ratio). Sadly on this excellent aviation forum, the claim by Hale to have bounced a U-2 at 88,000’ must be labelled as a figment of his imagination. No U-2 could, or can today, reach 88,000’. At lighter weights, level flight at 70 - 75,000’ is possible: but the margin between Mach buffet IAS at around 102kts IAS and a conventional level flight stall at around 94 knots is small. Smaller still when turning. Add in survivability – the U-2 pilot wears a pressure suit and the F3 pilot wears leg restrainers & a g-suit. #43 Another driver in an F6 had a close encounter with the North Sea and ended up pulling an estimated 13½G pull up ..... He told us that he had lace marks from his g-suit on his legs for days afterwards. A great survival story. But surely even this very tough F6 was bent beyond flyability having exceeded twice the normal “g” limit? Which airframe serial was it? |
I think 2 separate incidents have been mixed up
The Lightning that once overtook Concorde was described as 'the best of the best' by Flt Lt Mike Hale at the roll-out ceremony for XR749 at Teeside Airport on September 28th 1995. Now an instructor with 56 Sqn at Coningsby, Mike flew 80 sorties in XR749 after the aircraft was allocated to 11 Squadron at Binbrook. He has a particular affection for the aircraft: "The Lightning was an exceptional aircraft in every respect, but XR749 was one of the best of the best. It is probably the best aircraft that I will ever have had the privilege to fly. Because of her tail code BM, she was known as 'Big Mother', although the tail code changed to BO for her last few months on 11 before joining the LTF in January 1985. She was a very hot ship, even for a Lightning. She remained my aircraft for all her time on 11 Sqn despite my being entitled to an F6 as I moved up the squadron pecking order. I invariably asked for her to be allocated to me for the major exercises such as MALLET BLOW, OSEX, and ELDER FOREST despite her being a short range F3 - there were invariably plenty of tankers about!" His memories include the time in April 1984, during a squadron exchange at Binbrook, when he and XR749 participated in unofficial time-to-height and acceleration trials against F-104 Starfighters from Aalborg. The Lightnings won all races easily, with the exception of the low level supersonic acceleration, which was a dead-heat. This is not surprising when the records show that the year before on one sortie XR749 accelerated to Mach 2.3 (1500 mph) in September 1983. It was also in 1984, during a major NATO exercise that he intercepted an American U-2 at 66,000 ft, a height which they had previously considered safe from interception. Shortly before this intercept, he flew a zoom climb to 88,000ft |
Bigglesbrother
A great survival story. But surely even this very tough F6 was bent beyond flyability having exceeded twice the normal “g” limit? Which airframe serial was it? Possibly this one ?? Lightning F.6 XS898/K c/n 95244. f/f 20.5.66, Salmesbury Warton for storage. 9.1.67 'K' 5 Sqn. 30.1.73 60 MU overhaul, returned approx 4.73. 17.7.76 store. 6.78 'J' 5 Sqn with experimental unit markings. 2.80 store. 8.80 declared Cat 3 for wing cracks, fuel leaks and u/c mounting bracket. Airframe severely overstressed (IOG-14G) following pilot disorientation causing dive at Mach 1.3, but aircraft safely recovered to Binbrook, where stripped down and repaired with reinforcing plates! 27.3.81 'BC' 11 Sqn. 3.83 'AK' 5 Sqn. Storage with periodic air tests until 14.5.86 'BM' 11 Sqn. 7.5.87 store. 29.7.87 'BD' 11 Sqn. 30.6.88 Cranfield for Mr Arnold Glass. |
The 13.5 g was an estimate as the needle had wrapped itself around the end stop. Initially they thought there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, but next morning it had a distinct sag as the main spar had cracked. It sat in the hangar for a couple of years while they figured out what to with it and eventually welded some railway track to the main spar. Because it had been off flying for so long, when it came out again, it was the aircraft with the least overall fatigue on it so any high g sortie was planned to use that one!
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Re data link,
sorry a bit late on this. The data would have come to the aircraft via the UHF Radio, ARC 52 and maybe later the PTR 175. How sufficent data could have come over that RF link with AM modulation with sufficient redundency is still a complete mystery to me. Range 200 miles at 10,000 feet. Would this be enough range. Can anybody point me to a good site that explains it better ? Only had the pleasure of one once, that was at Cosford during training. Thank You |
Assuming we are talking of the same incident, the culprit told me that when he admitted to his sqn cdr that he had pulled 'a lot more than 10g', sqn cdr got cross and shouted "Why did you pull that much G?!!"
Reply: "Because I couldn't pull any f*****g harder!" |
PTR, 200 miles/ 10,000 feet is a little optimistic. Best you could hope for at 10k would be 114 miles. For 200 miles you would need to be at 30k which would be about right for a cruise near the trop.
The radio would most likely have been the ARC52 at the time. As for link capacity, Link 16 it was not. Think more an advance 1200 bps modem was circa 1990. The data link was probably slow and sequential with one command at a time. |
Bigglesbro, it was not just g-pants that he would have been wearing but a full partial pressure jerkin with sleeves and a Taylor partial pressure helmet. The latter allowed FL660 rather than the FL560 for the P/Q mask. I think the sleeves on the pressure jerkin permitted even greater heights to be flown. These were of course oxygen equipment limits and not necessarily air frame limits. IIRC the Lightning had the Mk 21 regulator that could deliver 30mm overpressure at 45,000ft and 70mm at 56,000ft.
Later our Mk 21s were downgraded to the Mk 17 which meant we could go to 50,000ft with only the P/Q mask. Then someone discovered aerodynamic suck which reduced the permitted oxygen flight levels by about 2000 feet. |
PN - unless the 'high flyer' was pre-planned. Hale would not have been wearing more than the posing kit biggles mentions, and thus to go to '88,000ft' (if only!) would be very foolish, and when he throttled back to come back down he would probably have in a very bad way with the loss of cabin pressure!
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BOAC, haven't checked the dates but the kit I was describing was in the late 60s. I believe the Taylor helmet didn't continue much after that.
As for flying at the airframe limit rather than the AvMed limit I think that has happened more than once. Too tempting to 'forget' what will happen if you have to step out the office before it has come to a complete stop. |
As a meer chopper puke, I was always in awe of this machine.
My first memory was as a twelve year old kid at Farnborough '64 where a formation team of 4 (IIRC) put on a very impressive turn. The noise was awesome and internal organ wrecking vibration too. A year later, as an ATC cadet I can remember being more than slightly impressed by a talk given by the CO's son who was operational on them at the time. I recall about that time a very good photo in the 'Daily Mirror' i think, of a lightning in a vertical dive about to bury itself in an east anglian field, as a tractor driver looks on. Later, as a QHI teaching fighter evasion in the west country, we were allocated some 'nings as opposition! (All Navy Hunters, our usual foe, on exercise up north) I can still see the lightning passing me nose about 20degrees up, flames belching from both exhausts, and still going downwards at about a hundred feet AGL. Very imressive! No kills, as I remember. A Wessex mate (initials MF) on 72 squadron in NI about 1981 used to tell a story of his time on the lighning OCU very similar to the 10+ G over the north sea story. That's how he claimed to wind up on helicopters! Too 'impressed' to continue the course! Just got an email from Amazon by strange co-incidence: That'll be a good read. Fantastic aeroplane. |
F6 on APC in Akrotiri shot himself down. Very neat trick, I thought, took real skill to do that. Rashid range (where the Alu plant is now near Dubai) my pairs leader thought he would film me from behind as I dropped 2x 100 gal 'napalm' loads - water, of course. I seem to recall it was 450 kts/50' agl. Anyway that excellent camera - F ninety-something - he was using revealed that, shortly after the release, he entered a very low-level black Cb of desert and general detritus and limped home to Sharjah. I, on my first A/G 30mm collected a round from the target frame, into the right eng intake, which stripped every single compressor blade from the engine. Deadstick into SHJ for which I deserved a medal. My logbook reads:'Two shot down'. The pairs leader was the mod of this forum beginning with 'W...' True. Memorable 1,000th post. Medal now? |
He filmed you 'dropping' at 20' with an ?F95?:eek: One hopes he has learnt about flying from that...................:).
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F6 on APC in Akrotiri shot himself down. Very neat trick, I thought, took real skill to do that. Either way, imagine 4 young rockapes, hearing about this inbound impending doom on the net, seeing it glide in, and then running around like headless chickens because we hadn't got a clue where it would land. It went over very low and did it skip and bounce when it hit - it made a hell of a noise and the sound I recall is the screeching sound of metal coming apart - I think it ended up on a gradual slope in someone's back garden. |
fantom, which accounts for the fact that we now use aluminium poles for the strafe targets despite the cost. A marksman however would shoot the shackles which of course were steel.
We acquired some Scimitars as targets and it was deemed that the 30mm aluminium 'armour' was soft as far as the Aden was concerned. A USAFE F15 engaged one (natural target really) and we never found the lid. |
noprobs,
I started turning hard after the first pass, and quickly suckered him into a low speed fight that soon led to a level scissors in which I was getting the better position. On the next cross, I saw him apparently doing the sensible thing, getting ready to bug out as his nose sliced down away from me. However, as I reversed, I saw his nose continuing to move in the same yawing motion, as he entered a spin. We still had plenty of height, he had a recoverable aircraft, and I had a jet in which I could change the thrust vector. So I moved the nozzles to the braking stop, pointed vertically down, and did my best to get the pipper on the rotating cockpit for the film. Thought the burnerless Lighntning even simulated the Argie Mirage 3 for the RAF Harrier force when they were practising at being interceptors in order to bolster task force interceptor numbers down south in '82. Having said that, reheat or not I bet the latter Mirage F1 was a handful in ACT. |
ARXW - having Lightning'd and viffed a fair bit, 'Viffing' is excellent, yes, but in more than a 1v1 you can find yourself at a distinct disadvantage having nozzled away your IAS and being left as an almost 'stationary' target with no K E.
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On Suffolk's phinest phighter squadron, we once did some ACT with FAF Mirage F1s after the Malvinas war, with the FAF simulating Matra 530 profiles...
We did the usual QWI-briefed stuff, they kept it simple. They won! Nice jet, big engine, good radar and weapon system.....SSSETOWTF as I understand the saying goes! |
Some years ago speaking with a bunch of Saudi Air Force F15 pilots, many who had flown the Lightning I asked which they preffered. The common consencus was the Lightning with the F15 weapon system.
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This months Classic Aircraft magazine has a 6 page article on the U2 Lightning interceptions, if anyone is interested.
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Ask one of our old F1 pilots about fighting against the phantom - they'll quickly dismiss it as: not a problem! (we used to have both, in fact we're still flying the phantom down in the south-eastern Med with all the latest gadgets on it). I imagine French M F1 would have had similar disdain for la phantom britannique (the Lightning that is)! The F1 had better T/W than the Mirage 3 but still compared to the mighty Lightning it was certainly lacking. Then again the phantom was also found lacking compared to the Lightning unless you want to talk about a very clean Spey jet.
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talking about frightenings, how does this qualify?: |
As a former SLEWC and Type 64 operator I seem to recall that we couldn't get automatic height read outs on the SLEWC from Lightnings, we had to call the HFR Operator and give him the range and bearing. However, my memory is etchy, but I do believe it was something like that.:}
FB:) |
No Mode C on the Frightning, so all claimed infringements by civil jets could be handled by the correct turn of phrase when speaking to the pilot. e.g.
"22, Staxton, LATCC has claimed you got to close to his 747 at FL350, confirm you had separation?" "Affirmative Staxton, good visual and not above FL340". As for flying at the airframe limit rather than the AvMed limit I think that has happened more than once. The most memorable was the response from the pilot who was heading towards the Aggressor Area and to whom I gave several avoiding turn instructions. After replying "Wait" in response to the first few, he eventual explained. "Staxton, I would if I could, but I can't. I'm VFR above* and slowly toppling end over end and it's very, very quiet. When things start working again, I'll let you know". *Top of the MRSA was either FL600 or FL660 at the time, can't remember when it changed. Rather p*ssed of Midland Radar when I handed another off for recovery at the edge of the Dive Arc along the lines of "22, on recovery, VFR." It was only when he checked in they discovered he was VFR above. :E |
I'm sure I met the chap in person at an airshow yonks ago: his name-tab on the growbag was "13G Fynes"
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I was lucky enough to live near them as a child, they were awe inspiring and I spent much of my primary education looking out the windows....... needless to say I joined the RAF :ok:
ISTR there were concepts for a swing wing design and side intakes, anyone have more information? Also wasn't there a suggestion to fit 4 x AIM-9? |
Ivan
I believe the 'swing wing' concept was proposed for a navalised version of the Lightning. It was not a conventional variable geometry wing such as the GR4 and F-111, but more variable geometry at the end of the wings (if that makes sense).... Cheers TO |
The P3 was the proposed variant with the side intakes, The variable geometry proposal doesn't appear to have a number.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i1...d/Untitled.jpg |
Back in 1984 I was on an ATC camp at Binbrook.My AEF was flown by an 11 Sqn pilot-quite an experience for a jet obsessed 14 year old.He admonished me for staring at the artificial horizon instead of looking outside.Apparently I'd 'get away with it at Woodvale but round here you're likely to get a Lightning up your arse'.Best flight I ever had-the poor Chippy was hurled all around the sky.
Anyway that year was a significant Lightning anniversary (30 years).As such there was a celebratory airshow at Binbrook.The Lightning prototype was on static and as we overflew prior to landing he banked above it,looked down and said 'ugly bugger at first wasn't she '? Love to do it again.I'd mither him senseless instead of being an awestruck teenager :) |
That swing wing design looks similar to the Fitter C. That design avoided the need for modification to the undercarriage.
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Drifting still further off thread down memory lane.....
The talk of Mirage F1 capabilities reminds me of a HUD film I saw on Maple Flag years ago. One of our JPs was seeing how low he dared fly down a fire break between the trees when he had a bit of a fright, the reason for which he sought to demonstrate on his film. Careful examination showed a single frame with the side view of an F1's fin in the bottom of the picture. The F1 was being flown with Gallic flair along a crossing fire break, just a little lower than our JP's jet. |
Not a pilot (unfortunately), but at airshows you just had to see the Lightning, Red Arrows (Gnats) and the Vulcan.
Used to see demented Phantom pilots hurtling around, awesome, but they could never quite match the turning circle of the big cigar tube. Lots of really good stuff flying about, but the big 3 were always the 'must see' shows. |
Back in 1984 I was on an ATC camp at Binbrook.My AEF was flown by an 11 Sqn pilot-quite an experience for a jet obsessed 14 year old.He admonished me for staring at the artificial horizon instead of looking outside.Apparently I'd 'get away with it at Woodvale but round here you're likely to get a Lightning up your arse'.Best flight I ever had-the poor Chippy was hurled all around the sky. Great people, happy days. |
Last Lightning Solo Display - RIAT 1987
I thought some might enjoy this - the last Lightning solo display at RIAT 1987. Flown by the then Flt Lt Jon Fynes (perhaps of 13G fame mentioned earlier ?) who went on to be Gp Capt Fynes, Commandant of CFS.
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I was around for the Akrotiri self hack. The pilot shot the wheel off the banner which went down the intake and trashed an engine. He limped home on the other engine which gave out on short finals where the pilot punched out and landed on base. The SAR crew were a little peeved as it was a land on recovery, well not many wet winching jobs out there. The jet ended up close to the main gate in a farmers mandra, he was happy as he could see pound signs in the sky.
Later that day in the bar, the pilot sporting a rather fat lip was in conversation with the Station Commander who was after a Lightening as Gate Guard. "Well Sir, I got it as close as I could". Makes a good story.:ok: Heads down, look out for the flack |
19 Sqn Lightning F2s Relocate To RAF Gutersloh 1965
Pathe News item from 1965 - there is an ad first but it's a better copy than the one on You Tube.
LIGHTNINGS TO GERMANY - British Pathé Commentary by Mr Cholmondley-Warner ! |
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