English Electric Lightning | The British supersonic fighter and interceptor aircraft | Upscaled

[Music] on the 14th of october 1947 captain charles chuck yeager of the united states air force kind aboard his bell x1 aircraft slung beneath the b-29 super fortress following his release he leveled off at 40 000 feet above the mojave desert and fired the third of the aircraft's four rockets initially the ride was rough in control almost non-existent then as he neared the speed of sound knock won the ride smoothed out and control was regained quickly the needle went to 1.02 paused several seconds and then jumped to 1.06 and that was it chuck jaeger had earned his place in history as the first man to pierce the dreaded sound barrier although news of the achievement was largely ignored give him suppress it only served to show just how much ground the british had lost in the quest for supersonic flight but it put in train the events that putra sat in britain's first supersonic fighter the lightning [Music] by 1942 there have been a number of incidents of pilots failing to pull out of dives whilst locked in combat some pilots did regain control and reported that the aircraft's controls had become solid once diving accompanied by a severe buffeting initially these reports had been dismissed as understandable confusion in the heat of devil but as more powerful engines became available the reports began to multiply at around about the end of 42 when i joined hawkers they the hawker company chief test by george bulman and his supporters ken smith and bill humble had started to investigate a phenomenon which was occurring on these big new fighters this was loss of control and very considerable buffeting and roughness that was experienced where they were diving these airplanes high up it wasn't happening low down but if they took them to if they tried to get these aeroplanes to dive to their limiting speeds at high altitude uh they were running into control difficulties aerodynamic excursionists working at the world aircraft establishment of falmer had come to believe that the cause of this phenomenon was a change in flow characteristics over the aircraft's surface waste due to the air becoming compressed as it approached the speed of sound quite simply in the thin air at high altitude the aerodynamics of the aircraft were preventing it from going any faster as the aircraft reaps the thicker air with around 10 000 feet the pilots were able to regain control by 1942 the terms supersonic and compressibility were beginning to be used in discussions about these incidents a new and apparently impenetrable limit had been reached and fighters were now dived to their compressibility limit was part of their test grigri we at hawkers were investigating why and we did find during that period and had established by about mid-1943 that if you got into this frightening um lack of control uh right into the point where you were actually out of control it was rolling and diving away from you despite everything you could do with it if you stayed there and wrote it down at from fifteen thousand feet or or so uh down to about ten thousand feet the speed of the aircraft relative to the speed of sound as you got into the thicker air uh reduced and as that occurred the shock waves died down and control came back and so you this was this was known as compressibility it was a recognized condition by the end of 43 and the designers were very very busy um tried to design the next generation of airplanes which would overcome this problem but until they did uh and it really wasn't until after the war that we got airplanes that would actually cope and get right through this condition compressibility was a limitation which all the air forces had to um observe and pilots had to be trained to avoid to get avoid getting into it raising the point of compressibility was only one part of the problem the other was designing an engine powerful enough to fly even faster piston engines had virtually reached the limits of their potential and so in 1942 british officials began to take a new interest in the concept dismissed by them some years earlier frank whittles jet engine meanwhile germany had also been developing a jail however by the last year of the war the luftwaffe had been beaten back to a point where its only useful role was one of air defense against the allied bomber formations that palmeted german cities by night and day in this defensive capacity they were helped greatly by the arrival of the measuresmit 262. its rate of climate that could be scrambled in time to intercept allied bomber formations but what came as a shock to the pilots frying fighters like the mustang and lake mark spitfires escorting the bombers was the sheer speed of the me262 not only was it nearly 100 miles an hour faster it could dive significantly faster the sweat wings and jet power of the ne-262 showed that military aviation had reached a new threshold with relevance to the swept wing what's the very high mach number that could be achieved with it in control as opposed to any of the allied aircraft flying at that time i mean it was a huge gap quantum a quantum jump really the germans set about their research um in a way which was very effective and by the middle of the war they were advanced very considerably in in terms of aerodynamics and high speed and they had produced a number of uh experimental aircraft which would get very very close to the speed of sound the first one uh that was um a practical value was the message 262 which was a twin-engine fighter that in 1943 was streets of head of anything that the allies had it was being built and developed at the time of our meteor but it was a better aerodynamic concept and it was so far advanced that the the germans were able to put it into service in 1944 at the same time gloucester was beginning flight trials of its e-28 prototype which was powered by frank whittle's jet engine although the specifications had been for a research machine it was planned to develop the aircraft into an interceptor fighter with fixed guns the result was the gloucester meteor although it was only used in defensive operations against v-1 flying bonds the second most powerful air force in the west had entered the jet age the meteor one two and three were inadequate underpowered and not effective fighter airplanes the meteor4 with the derby five engines considerably uprated uh slightly improved aerodynamics was a better and more capable airplane and provided the basis for trading the fighter squadrons of the royal air force in the use of jet fighters having said that it was never an air superiority fighter to match airplanes like the the north american sabre or the big 15 but it was for the late 1940s it was a good step forward it was a reliable airplane and it trained the air force to fly formation in jets and do high-speed intercepts and so on there was however more at the beginning of the jet era than the introduction of this new and greatly increased source of power compressibility remained a problem even with jetpan the challenge was now to produce designs that were aerodynamically capable of controllable flight at even higher speeds and so the period immediately following the second world war was one of change and excitement in aviation the allies lost no time in scrutinizing german research data on transonic aerodynamics but the race to go supersonic was all but over even before chakriega began his historic mission the british government had cancelled the miles m-52 a research project began in 1942 but now in its final build phase the aim had been to design an aircraft capable of going supersonic it had a number of design features that made it look remarkably like the bell x1 but there were misgivings about its potential in high places the official reason was that the cost was too high and besides flying through the sound barrier would be too dangerous for the pilot when the news came i was absolutely shattered and i think we were sitting in the jet flight when we got a notice from the director telling us the project had been cancelled and it was as if we'd all lost a best friend really i can only say we were totally crestfallen at the time and at first that was how it was then it began to boil up a little into anger that this had been done without consulting us we felt as the test pilots we should have been had a say in the matter but maybe that's asking too much uh a supersonic airplane had to come and then the government for its own reasons canceled so there was a enormous sense of um well we're losing the place you know we we were we were about to lead the world and now we're being restricted and held back and then of course the following six months then the americans did it and of course they went they held headed leaps and bounds and we in fact lost about 10 years in the development of military fighter airplanes as a result of that decision meanwhile the raf sewed along with its meteors and de havilland vampires which had come into operational service in 1946 despite its outdated design the meteor went on to set the world speed record in 1946 of 606 miles per hour however it was becoming clear that the west faced a new threat to peace from soviet russia and her satellites in eastern europe russia had been massively hurt by the wall and its leaders and people never wanted to have such pain inflicted on it again for this reason she began a program of rapid modernization of her armed forces in particular the air force benefited greatly from help given to her by her former allies b-29 bombers formerly belonging to the u.s air force provided the basis for a new long-range bomber force then britain provided the soviets with a batch of world's voice jet engines soon the russians had a transonic jet fighter of their own the mig-15 soviets intentions became even clearer when in december 1947 they managed the blockade of berlin iron curtain had come down across europe the cold war had begun to compound their problems the raf were horrified when australian air force meteors were shot out of the skies by mig-15s during the korean war however in britain the chiefs of staff had already begun to respond to the threat an order for the north american f-86 sabre had been placed to fill the gaps in the country's air defenses while new british-built swept wing fighters were being designed like the sabre they would be capable of even greater transonic performance at the same time britain's first jet bomber the canberra began its flight testing the canberra was built by the english electric company under the leadership of chief engineer ew teddy petter the canberra had been specified as a replacement for the mosquito however it became clear during the design process that this aircraft would have superior performance to all of the raf's current fighters it was capable of frying at 55 000 feet at almost 600 miles per hour well beyond the range of any interceptors whitehull was not convinced in the fullness of time came the the summer exercises whereby traditionally uh bomber command would would set up attacking forces coming in from the low countries uh to be intercepted by the fighter defenses of this country and it became very very apparent that um when the cameras came in that the meteors weren't going to get anywhere near them and progressively the the camera force was ordered to come lower and lower and lower until the meteors could actually catch them and it would they actually had to come down to about 30 000 feet before they could do that by 1948 the company had achieved a turnaround of opinion in whitewall and the go ahead was given for a design study for a fully supersonic fighter the p1 in the discussions in 1948 about the future fighter i was asked as a chief test by what i felt about the the practicability of of um uh flying at supersonic speeds on intercepts and in combat and i said i didn't think there'd be any problem um because it was all a question of relative speeds uh and that uh the only thing we had to resolve was controllability and we had to make sure had to overcome the problems of compressibility and make the airplane fly as accurately as smoothly and precisely at supersonic speeds as the current generations were subsonic speed the p1 evolved over a period between 1949 and 1953 against a background as hazardous research under supersonic flight de havilland had developed an unusual tailless design which later became known as the swollen the death of jeffrey de havilland was testing the spawning led to this project being cancelled but not before john derry became the first pilot to fly a british plane through the sound barrier albeit in a barely controllable dial at the same time supermarine had developed its 5-1-0 prototype into the swift although swift's entered operational service with the raf they only ever received lukewarm support finally hawker had developed its p1052 into the hunter this aircraft had become the best of the series with the ability to maintain a speed just below the speed of sound in level flight by 1954 hunters were replacing the north american sables as the raf's frontline interceptor whilst these aircraft could on occasions pierce the sound barrier in a dive it had become clear that this era of fighters with relatively thick wings swept at 45 degrees and high tail planes would not produce a truly supersonic fighter and i think the period from 1945 to the end of the forties uh was a period where the air force was putting up with the new jet airplanes because they're jet airplanes and and everybody needed that sort of speed and so these airplanes had actually outpaced the the fastest piston engine fighters uh having said that i think uh we would have been badly placed if a war had occurred at that time because i don't think they would have been found to be very effective from the 50s onwards the hunters came into service which was a very very fine subsonic fighter the americans had the saber which was a very fine subsonic fighter and the british started to have the camera which was the world's best twin-engine jet bomber so it all changed pattern from difficulties and mediocrity in the late 40s to get into to grips with the world's best aeroplanes by the 50s petter and his team set about designing the aircraft known as the p1 using all the experience from wartime germany and postwar america firstly the p1 had a slim low drag fuselage with a nose air intake and ducts passing below the cockroach two armstrong sidly sapphire axial flow engines each capable of producing 7000 pounds of thrust were mounted in the central fuselage one above the other however in order to avoid too much engine weight aft the lower engine was located well forward of the upper this layout meant that the p1 had twice the thrust of a single engine with only around one and a half times the frontal area unlike any aircraft flying at the time it had a radical shoulder mounted wing swept to 60 degrees these wings were incredibly thin but immensely strong finally the configuration was completed with a thin all-moving tail plane mounted to the bottom of the rear fuselage in order to test this and other ideas further specifications were issued the first was issued to shorts resulting in the fight well it was so it was a curious uh interesting thing to fly i mean it it had very very underpowered from the from takeoff which was extremely lengthy you flew it at full throttle until it was time to go home because it wouldn't it wasn't going anywhere at all it was very valuable in assessing why i said it was valuable it was it was effective improving what the english electric theory uh the sb5 showed conclusively that the high-tail plane with the swept 66 60 degree swept wing uh was a dangerous configuration from stability point of view and the tail plane had to be low from our point of view it provided a valuable little piece of development because um it was known that with these sort of sweep angles the the the leading edge vortex at high angles of attack um could adversely affect natural control as the vortex flowed over the wing over the aileron you could have variations in aileron effectiveness the re had already identified this and were recorded recommending to wharton that we should have big wing fences on the p1 like the hunter aria dynamics said no thank you feds is a drag we don't want to have that we will create a pressure fence by cutting small cordwise slots on the leading edge of the wing in areas which were needed for inward vent valves for the fuel tanks they put the the intakes of the vent files at the back end of these slots and the slots in fact effectively transferred air air flow up over the wing um controlling the vortex as you got to a high angle of attack we tested this on the sp5 it worked like a charm um we could go from the variations in aileron effectiveness without them at high angles of attack to no variations at all with these chord wise slots so we cut those slots in the p1 for the first flight and they remained on the lightning for the whole of its life it was it was a good a good little program a second specification was awarded to ferry and called for an even more radical aircraft which would explore the possibilities of a delta wing in supersonic flight christened the fd2 following ferry's earlier experiments with this layout the aircraft proved to be very tempermental to fly at subsonic speeds however the aircraft went on to set the absolute world air speed record of 1132 miles per hour in 1956 it was then passed over to the bristol aircraft company where it was used as a test bed for ideas that were being developed for a new supersonic transmould aircraft concorde through all of this english electric quietly got on with developing the p1 and on the 4th of august 1954 chief test pilot roland beamond finally took us for a full flight we'd done a week of taxiing to test the brakes test the steering more importantly to test the drag shoot the braking parachute and then when we'd finally got all those things working together i'd say uh to to the um you know the team that we were working with okay i think we're we we should do a straight uh which is short for a straight hop we're doing it on boston down delivery for the long runway i said it feels fine to me we've tested it to those wheel lift um i'd like to do a straight before we commit ourselves to flying and let's do that next time so we then went out and did a full power run-up up accelerate the nose wheel lift which we'd established previously held it in those wheel lift until it accelerated another 10 lots felt it break ground ease the stick forward uh held it parallel right probably five to ten feet for 500 yards and then uh eased it down and then so we we then established today it broke ground comfortably it was stable in flight and more importantly we were doing the first lady before we down the first flight and that all is a great confidence builder and so you knew how it's going to land so on flight one i'd virtually been there before so that i was looking forward to flight one with with great anticipation and it all went according to plan in every technical way you could think of then on only its third flight on august the 11th beamont took the p1 passed mach 1. britain now had a supersonic aircraft his own depth fight was flight through three and we planned it on the third flight as a normal professional plan to take it up to 40 000 feet uh accelerate to 450 knots and see what happened on the mark meter and how it behaved in control and stability and somewhere around about celsius going up the channel on bright sunny day um the mark meter went to a dynasty it had before hesitated there for a very short time then swung up to 1.02 and we were supersonic and i took my hands off the stick my feet off the radar bar the airplane stayed absolutely firm no just trim displacements or anything like that small controlling puts left stick right stick pitch up and down sprues stable responses and we had a supersonic airplane no vibration no buffet nothing at all that was a good that was a good feeling yet world events were forcing the pace of change the soviets had detonated their first nuclear bomb and were now building a fleet of bombers to carry these lethal weapons in addition they had now developed their first supersonic fighter the make-21 the americans had developed the saber into the supersonic f-100 super saiyan and had also embarked on a program of developing a new concept in which the aircraft formed part of a turco package combining supersonic performance with missile weapons the raf was intent on following at the same time britain was developing a long-range jet-powered bomber falls capable of delivering nuclear bonds it was envisaged in the white paper delivered in 1957 that these v bombers would form britain's deterrent force at the same time the defense of their bases and indeed the whole of the united kingdom would ultimately be entrusted to surface-to-air missiles in the meantime air defense lay with the all-weather javelin uh it's limitations whether it was a short-range interceptor again by um in my view very erroneous specification in the early days when uh we were told that this airplane had to be designed around a radius of action of 150 nautical miles from the v bomber bases as its main task was to be only to defend those bases this limited the airplane enormously and i i actually went after the first flight of the lightning i wrote a a very positive handling report on it and i concluded by saying however despite all that's gone before we will never stand a chance of of exporting this lightning anywhere around the world until we double the internal fuel capacity and a ventral fairing was introduced to accommodate an extra 250 gallons of fuel in addition the engines had been upgraded to avon 201s which could provide over 14 000 pounds of thrust each as well as having full stage afterburn it was these mighty engines that gave the lightning its awesome power they were so powerful the pilot could literally stand the aircraft on its tail and climb vertically a spectacle that would thrill millions of spectators around the world in years to come i think it's summarized by the um famous part of johnny house squadron 74 when he was interviewed after his first flight in the lightning and the interviewer said well how did you get on your first trip with the lightning he said superb i was with it all the way till i left till i let the brakes off um i remember i was talking to i think it was really bimont or jimmy dell and it was at the time when they were trying to sell the airplane in europe and uh a test pilot from one of the european countries came over to fly a lightning from wharton and they said to him we use ordinary full power on takeoff not reheat don't use reheat and they watched him take off and he decided he was going to use reheat he didn't get his wheels up until he was at 28 000 feet because he it ran away with it this the p1b was essentially the aircraft that went into projection in october 1958 designated the lightning s mach 1. by now the aircraft was equipped with twin aidan guns also because it was assumed that the only role for lightning was to shoot down the tucking bombers two new fire streak air-to-air missiles were mounted on pylons low on either side of the nose finally ferrante developed a doppler radar system in a comical center body which was located in the circular moe's intunk the lightning could now take its place as part of a weapons system the new idea from the united states in which the weapon-carrying fighter was the armed element of a defense system embracing long-range radar interceptor control and short-range last resort surface-to-air missiles later in 1958 beamont underlined the aircraft's potential still further by flying at mark 2 twice the speed of sound and when we got up to around about 98 we knew we were this just about to get to part two and that was a jolly interesting occasion because it was a it was a target and it was also fascinating to see that the aeroplane was behaving just as it had been even subsonic it so it was quiet it was smooth it was responsive you're looking for any uh errors or discrepancies engine instruments were fine the temperatures were in limits uh and then we got to mark two and um it could almost be an anti-climax because there was mark two on the gauge and nothing else was happening but then there were tests to perform again which could be interesting because you had to to establish whether the airplane was still particularly still stable direction where it might be starting to get difficult that was positive then we were running out of fuel hauled the power back turned it back to base uh and we were descending on this lovely clear day over the by this time over the lake district having gone right round through um around dumfries the right round to windermere in this supersonic turn um we were then subsonic and coming home with britain's first mark two airplane so it was a good flight the first quadrant to receive the mark 1 in june 1960 was number 74 tiger squadron at cultural under the command of squadron leader john howe to go from subsonic to an airplane that was capable of mach 2 in level flight was quite a jump quite a jump and of course the introduction of a weapon system that was so more complex and effective than we'd had in the past was a big jump the intention was to gain experience in integrating a supersonic interceptor into fighter command's key eastern sector defense structure the task was enormous particularly on the ground crews who had to keep these complex new fighters serviceable all new airplanes have teething problems and the lightning was no exception as i recall the main problem with us was electrical one way or another and the supply system hadn't yet caught up with this change i mean the introduction of new airplane new system new parts and everything was new and consequently with the airplane having these electronics go wrong so often the supply wasn't keeping up so we got a tremendous amount of help from english electric on this and i would ring roly beamont or jimmy dale and say what had gone wrong and the part i needed and they would said well yeah come and fetch one so we'd send a meteor or the hunter seven fetch the part get the lightning back in the air and carry on like that additional pressure arose from the need to display the aircraft in order to stimulate potential foreign sales 74 were ordered to have a four-ship display team ready to fly every day at the farnborough air show in september of that year it was a tough order because they still didn't have four serviceable aircraft at least not at the same time from the point of view that we couldn't get on with our operational training as we wished but it was fun and we enjoyed it getting nine airplanes in the air and having 12 the whole lot serviceable to choose from was quite a feat on the part of the ground crew but i worked out that to train a formation aerobatic team of nine i only needed three aeroplanes because nobody has more than one between him and the leader so if they could give us three to train for formation aerobatics i could work up the team and the other airplanes would provide the operational training for the conversion 74 was there ready to impress the crowds of farnborough their display established the lightning as a firm favorite on the earthshow circuits throughout the aircraft's service life apart from their display commitments 74 squadron were having to perform their role as a front line squadron in britain's defense pilots had to learn to fly the lightning whilst maintaining an operational capability it was a tough requirement the conversion was fairly straightforward we didn't have two seaters in those days and you were taught about the systems during lectures and things like that and then you had 10 hours on the lightning simulator which was a reproduction of the lightning cockpit so by the time you got into the air you knew what to expect from all the instruments and towards the end the uh were on your last sort in the simulator basically you had to try and get the airplane into the air because they kept giving you emergencies on the ground and when you got into the air you then had to try and get it back so by the time you'd finished the simulator side of things you really felt you could handle those sort of things then when you came to fly the aeroplane that was a totally different experience i mean that power was just unbelievable to make matters even more difficult the squadron was now taking what were termed first tourists these were pilots who had never been with an operational squadron before and who are now having to make the jump from frying subsonic gents such as the hunter to lightnings with mark ii on tap the first flight and the lightning was an experience a pilot never forgot taxing out we had a system where you had to keep the electrics online one of the engines had to be the certain res in about fifty percent somehow and if you didn't use the brakes you'd be building up to about 70 knots and line up with the runway and then you could just feel this power on the brakes open up the engines and let go and it was just a way and i remember trying to get the nose high enough to reduce the speed to 450 knots which was the climbing speed at about 18 20 000 feet i went supersonic and i think a lot of people did on the first server but it handled beautifully uh it was a super airplane to fly when you took off from kodashaw you had a very rapid rate of climb and in the radar center there would be a light to come up to warn them that an aircraft was taking off from kodashaw a lot of climb i decided one day to do a timed climb to 30 000 feet and so i put reheat in and let the brakes go and set the stopwatch going and i was passing twelve thousand feet when air traffic called me and said check at 15 constriction ahead i immediately replied sorry now passing 18 and we got to 30 000 feet in one and a half minutes in reheats but it was it was a great aircraft to fly a great uh the last of the great sports cars many people will tell you it was built to fly with delightful handling handling characteristics because you had to fly the thing and at the same time operate this uh the radar weapon system i really couldn't believe i was so lucky to be flying this airplane it was it was a quantum leap of course from the hunters that i'd been flying uh certainly i didn't find it as difficult to fly as i perhaps imagined in the sense that it was a fairly easy aeroplane to fly the lightning's achilles heel its lack of endurance was a constant concern and the aircraft would have proved totally inadequate and had been necessary to reinforce raf commands overseas however the technique of in-fight refuelling had been perfected aided by an availability of valiant and victor bombers converted to do the job converting the lightnings in order to take advantage of this capability was fraught with difficulties firstly there was the question of where to put the probe when we first saw the probe mopped up in the in the mock-up at wharton for the lightning the probe you're the i couldn't believe what i was seeing this was one of the few occasions where there hadn't been direct coordination between the design department and the flight department where normally all fly matters there were sort of interchange of views and um the probe i looked at this thing from the cockpit of the mock-up and the probe hem was behind my shoulder and i thought how the hell am i going to steer that into a drogue that's coming down like that and i pointed this out to the designers they said oh well that was nobody's objective before so i said well i'm objecting now they said too late we've already issued the drawings so i said well you're going to have to change the drawings aren't you and we had a hell of a rubber that eventually got it extended forward so you could see the probe head in the windscreen where it ought to be refilling initially it was tricky i don't i don't know whether you've seen the refueling probe on the lightning which was very much an afterthought and like many other things but uh it was it was it was relatively tricky initially um but but rather like riding a bicycle once you once you've got the act uh you can it becomes uh fairly second nature and certainly if you do a lot of it when you do when you're doing it sort of on a regular basis then it then it uh the problem tends to that problem tends to go away uh the the original pro the problems with the original uh flight refill of the lightning was that we were refueling against the valiant tanker first of all and then the then the vulcan which had only at that stage a centerline probe uh and drove sorry not a centerline probe a centerline drogue with a big basket which of course was effectively designed to refuel other v-bombers so you had this enormous basket into which you you stuck your little lightning probe and if there was any anything of a wiggle on this this hose it would just literally take whip the end off your probe and that was it progressive development continued resulting in the mark ii in july 1962 with fully variable afterburning havens as well as an autopilot and steerable nose wheel this was followed by the mark iii the lightning f3 marked a major turning point in the lightning's development firstly it had a broader more angular fin threatened at the top it also had a kinked and cambered wing age which was flatter at the end than befall but perhaps even more significantly the lightning f3 had no guns the fire streak air-to-air missile had been developed so that it was now fully integrated into the aircraft's guidance systems big mistake to drop the guns i think every fighter pilot would tell you to drop guns from a fighter airplane yes and and certainly we all felt that that was uh a big mistake and of course it was redressed in the when the when the mark six came into service and they put them in in the pack in the pack but i again it was a problem of of space in the airplane uh if you put a bigger weapon system in a bigger radar with lots more black a lot more black boxes there just isn't room for guns and that was the problem i suspect this was the era of qra or quick reaction alert this meant that aircraft and pilots were kept in a state of readiness so that should intruders be spotted the lightnings could be scrambled to interception [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] our role was to intercept far enough out over the north sea basically high or low level to prevent them from firing missiles at us that did not require long range what we had to be able to do is react quickly get out there fast fire get back turn around and out back and out and back the lightning force is much better looked after in the sense that we did most of our qra from crew room readiness initially and then eventually of course they built the qra sheds where you you were very well looked after the aircraft was covered catered for uh you had sleeping facilities so it was uh became quite a pleasant environment in that if you can call sitting qra a pleasant environment because of course for quite a lot of for the time you're on qra you're dressed in your flying kit and when you're wearing an immersion suit you know that's that wearing it for a lengthy period it becomes becomes very exhausting we sat qra quick reaction alerts periodically and the aim there was that from getting the scramble order whether you were we were relaxing in the crew room say or sleep at night ten minutes later you could be airborne um and that could be done there was no doubt about that the aircraft um the longest thing was getting into your kit so you kept your kit on and then you ran out of the aircraft pressed a button the the hanger doors opened front and back you jumped into the jet and two buttons you were started 74 squadron was now based up at lucas responsible for patrolling the vast areas of the north sea particularly the vital gap between western scotland and greenland in 1966 74 squadron replaced its f3s with the new f6 firstly the pilots got their machine guns back for the f6 could carry combinations of other moments in special packs the new aircraft had a much enlarged ventral pack which contained a fuel tank holding 610 garbage there was also an option to carry two over wing tanks each containing a further 250 gallons they had to be mounted on top of the wings because there was no room underneath for the tanks and the undercarriage these refinements coupled with an enlarged wing meant that the lightning's abysmal range was increased by 20 for 74 squadron this was particularly important for in june 1967 the squadron left for tenga singapore the lake from cyprus to masera proved to be particularly hazardous as their route took them over turkey and iran i i flew the same airplane all the way from from the uk to singapore simply because the thing was unserviceable the whole way from uk to singapore my i think it was my starboard wing that the tanks never fade the fuel i took had the same fuel when i arrived in singapore as i left lucas with and so the airplane was basically unserviceable the whole way and i just all i had to do i'd say all i had to do what i had to do of course was to do considerably more flight refuelings uh which which the tanker force were well able to cope with um on the way there just to get the airplanes out there and i and we arrived again from memory we arrived on the right day about 30 minutes later than actually planned six months before so i got there with my three airplanes virtually on to on day on time and that was that that to me was a tribute to the success of the planning particularly by the tanker force throughout this period lightning squadrons continued to display their aircraft around the world but it was not until 1966 that the sales effort began to show results what we had to do was to explain to the saudi arabians that if they bought a lightning with all its enormous capability it wouldn't be the likely that the air force was restricted with which was the the mark vi but that it would have additional capabilities of reconnaissance up to supersonic speed reconnaissance underwing stores rockets or bombs um two inch rockets it was a multi-role airplane um and overwing tanks as well we had done all of these things separately now we were going to bring them all together except for the vinton camera part um if the scientists wanted it they came over and they did an evaluation they said we will not entertain thoughts of having your airplane uh until our pilot our test pilot tests it you see and they sent the chap over by the name of captain hamdan and said we will fly your your lightning and we said okay fine what experiences he had and they said oh he's current on uh shapers and i said yes well that's all right a severe pilot could convert onto a the lightning with some duel uh there won't be time for that the saudi authorities said he'd do one dual flight and then one soda fight into lightning and during that solar flight and the lightning he must go to about two so this was a chap who was going to do his first flight on a sunday flight on the lightning and go to mark two on one flight i mean it throws the the the lightning conversion unit at colty shawl and things into complete disarray i thought like that the lightnings exported to saudi arabia and kuwait revariance of the mark vi but with ground attack capability as well as versions of the two-seater t5 the f6 was to be the last totally british-built supersonic aircraft for in 1966 an order had been placed for the mcdonald douglas f4 phantom whilst the aircraft's design was already 14 years old it was well proven in combat in vietnam it was while locked in combat with the north vietnamese mig-21s that the american pilots learned the value of a machine gun well for conventional fighter pilots um they couldn't see the point of a fighter without guns um because they felt that it was most likely that you'd come up against other fighters and because the nato air missile in those days required space to align and lock on and all the rest of it uh you could be in a situation where you would be fine against other fighters who had guns and you didn't and you were therefore at a disadvantage i can see the the the missile was wonderful for air defense but not there to air combat the make 21 which was in many respects a russian lightning was far more maneuverable and could turn in tight enough to shake off the missile the defenseless phantoms made easy targets the americans soon learned their lesson and phantoms were subsequently fitted with guns but would the likelines had made a good dog fighter yes the lightning was a very good dog fight it had the power it had the ability to turn very very sharply it could accelerate it really was i thought a good dog fighter yeah the phantoms however had a more advanced radar system that enabled the pilot to look down as well as forward but it now required two crewmen to manage all its systems in order to get the most out of its fighter force the raf began to experiment with a new consent the mixed fighter force the strategy it was for the phantoms to use their look down capability to seek out bomber formations or ground darkness while the lightning was used to look forward when that to seek out gunter sector as both aircraft had similar performance the combination worked well but their days were numbering we were complimentary i think each aircraft is complementary to another and and the the the requirement effectively is to use the force in the best possible way uh either by operating them together or in a combined sense if you can and towards at the end of my time at binbrook then we got into the mixed fighter force because at the time they were introducing the hawk which was a a the jet trainer [Music] if you like no radar capability at all so it need to be led into the fight or led into the bomber stream although it had a weapons capability um and again the the air force was reducing in size so the numbers of airplanes going down so the air force fell felt and found that it needed to use every available airplane that it could so you now get into the into the area of trying to operate various types of airplanes together and that's where the mixed fighter force came in and the original intention was that that we would all lightnings phantoms and hawks would effectively all go together towards the bomber to the cap points uh and then if you like do our not do our own thing from there but then a radar equipped airplane would take a hawk into the bomber stream so we would arrive at the point and then go into the bomber stream and then once you're in the bomber stream then you're on your own effectively the lightning was only supposed to have a service life of eight years and as early as the mid-60s plans have been put in motion to find a long-term replacement given the enormous cost of developing supersonic aircraft britain was forced to find apartments the lightning however soldiered on until 1988 when numbers 5 and 11 squadrons traded in their lightnings for tornado f friends forty years after the original climbing had been formulated the lightning which was created at the beginning of the cold war had survived to witness its conclusion today the lightning is remembered for its blistering performance a performance that even some of the most advanced fighters in the world cannot match yet the lightning set more benchmarks in aircraft design than speed alone highly swept wings no airplanes they've all got all got him look around all the jets the the um uh exotic russians f-16 um f-15 uh the um excluding the french which is another matter the the ef ef 2000 they all have swept wings low tail plane and that that is a legacy of the lightning the lightning started the fashion and that's the way they'll always be unless you go to a pure delta i think that we had hoped that we would go through the sun barrier and level flight as opposed to the screaming dive downhill i mean the hunter could um go through the sound barrier downhill and uh american similarly in the saber the center but to go through it level flight that is an achievement and it was certainly at that time and i think it made every britain proud every man that was involved in aviation anyway oh no i think the lightning is some a nice little milestone in our aviation history i think the legacy of the lightning as far as our royal air force is concerned is that it did bring technology to the forefront of the people that had to fly it service it operate it control it in the uh sector operations center it was a high-tech beastie for its time and luckily our very senior officers now both air crew and engineers were brought up with that concept so i think it probably made our air force much more or helped to make us technology conscious rather than frightened of technology that's just my view i would have thought that uh certainly in terms of recognition that you need an airplane with a dog fighting capability or an air combat capability that that's been seen to be a continuing requirement and we're now into eurofighter because with the if you like the the phantom and then the tornado f3 i haven't operated the tornado f3 know very little about it but reputedly it doesn't have it wasn't designed doesn't have that sort of capability also the need if you like for the supersonic dash is still seen to be there and aerodynamically i'm sure the lightning [Music] contributed to that [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] if you enjoyed this video please remember to like and subscribe and as always thank you for watching

Channel: DroneScapes

Views: 280,535

Keywords: english electric lightning, royal air force, english electric, cold war, mach 2, mach two, supersonic, supersonic english, AdKey:3-Xg6wP8wBnrop, supersonic british aircraft, British supersonic jet, cold war gameplay, british aircraft, british aircraft industry, british jets, british jet fighters, british jet fighters 1960s, british jet aircraft, great britain, english electric lightning vertical take off, english electric lightning documentary, british pilot, british pilots

Id: BRSOeyvpmqQ

Length: 60min 37sec (3637 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2022