Sometimes the best part of history is just
a ripping yarn. One of those stories where truth is stranger than fiction. Like that
day in 1966 when a Royal Air Force ground crewman accidentally took off in one of the
world's fastest aircraft, if for no other reason than it's just a darn exciting story.
It is history that deserves to be remembered. On July 22nd 1966, Royal Air Force Wing Commander
Walter “Taffy” Holden was in the cockpit of a Lightning F1 fighter interceptor on runway 36
at RAF Lyneham. Introduced in 1959, the English Electric Lightning was a very fast aircraft
that used a unique staggered configuration of two rolls-royce Avon turbojet engines within the
fuselage. The F1 was the first production model of the Lightning, and the Lightning remains
to this day the fastest UK designed and built fighter aircraft in history, with later models
capable of reaching Mach 2. At the time, the United Kingdom's nuclear-armed strategic bomber
force was called V-Force, referring to the three RAF bomber types of the era. The Vickers Valiant,
the Avro Vulcan, and the Handley Page Victor. The RAF assumed that in the event of an attack by
Soviet strategic bombers, the V-Force airfields would be a prime target, and the English Electric
Lightning was designed to defend those airfields long enough for V-Force to take off and get clear.
It was anticipated that the Soviet Union would soon deploy a supersonic bomber which they did,
the Tupolev Tu-22 NATO reporting name Blinder, introduced in 1962. Given the Blinders top speed
of mach 1.4 and the limited role envisioned for the Lightning defending airfields, emphasis
for the planes design was put on rate-of-climb, acceleration, and speed at the expense of range.
The plane achieved this through a number of design features, the most unique being the vertically
stacked, and longitudinally staggered engines. Design allowed the thrust of two engines while
producing only the drag of one and a half engines, a 25% reduction in drag over traditional
side-by-side engine design. In addition, the design allowed a low frontal area and
efficient single-engine type handling, as having both engines within the fuselage
means that there was no asymmetrical thrust. The combination of the engine design and the radical
60-degree notched DeltaWing allowed not just great speed but an exceptional climb rate. The
Lightning was famous for its ability to rapidly rotate from takeoff to climb almost vertically
from the runway. And if you needed extra thrust, it had a reheat. Sometimes called an afterburner
a reheat injects additional fuel into the jet pipe downstream of the turbine. The resulting heat
significantly increases thrust at the cost of very high fuel consumption and decreased fuel
efficiency. Reheat could be used for short sharp takeoffs, a process that is described
as, “being like a bullet fired from a gun.” Given its design emphasis, a
Lightning could be tricky to handle and was described by its pilot
as like, “being saddled to a skyrocket.” The particular aircraft being used that day,
number XM-135, was in for repairs having an electronics issue with the RAF 33rd maintenance
unit. The 33-MU based at RAF Lynam since 1940, was a civilian manned aircraft storage unit
commanded by Wing Commander Holden which stored and maintained three types of aircraft,
the English Electric Canberra medium bomber, the Gloster Meteor jet fighter interceptor, and
the Lightning. The planes would be dispatched to RAF units as they were ready and needed. Having
dispatched all of their Canberras and Meteors, the unit was due to be disbanded as soon as all
the remaining Lightnings were dispatched. However, XM135 which had been the very first full
production Mark One off the assembly line and had served at the central
flight school at Coulter Shaw, was having a particular electronics problem.
This being the last aircraft before the unit was closed, Wing Commander Holden was under some
pressure to get the plane fixed and dispatched. To make matters more complex the unit had
a qualified test pilot assigned to it but that pilot was not qualified on the Lightning,
thus to test XM135, the unit had to wait until a qualified Lightning test pilot was available.
The plane had a recurring electrical problem, during the first few moments of takeoff the
inverter that supplied power to the instruments would cut out, forcing a backup to kick in.
That is not ideal under any circumstances, but particularly troublesome on the Lightning where
“Being shot like a bullet from a gun” didn't give the pilot a lot of reaction time. The electricians
had been unable to tamp down the problem. The test pilot who was available tried the plane a couple
of times but the problem persisted. Without a solution they couldn't keep the pilot on temporary
duty. The electrician's decided to devise some tests which might isolate the fault and indicate
roughly where and which component was at fault. They needed to test the plane on the runway,
having the pilot make short runs while throwing various switches to see if they could replicate
the problem and identify what was causing it. However they didn't have a test pilot. Still under
pressure to keep the clearance timetable, Holden found out that there would not be a qualified
test pilot to do the tests for another week. But they did have an option because Wing Commander
Holden was a qualified pilot. Holden had enlisted in the RAF in 1943 and had elected to pursue
a career in aircraft engineering. But the RAF had allowed him to train and earn his wings under
the theory that an engineer who was a pilot would be better able to understand the pilots point of
view when dealing with maintenance issues. He'd learned to fly on the de Havilland Tiger Moth.
The de Havilland Tiger Moth was a single engine biplane first introduced in 1931. It had a maximum
speed of 109 miles per hour, somewhat slower than the maximum 1,300 miles per hour of the english
electric Lightning. Holden had also flown the de Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk, which while
still a single-engine propeller driven plane, was at least a monoplane as opposed to a biplane.
Holden had never piloted a jet aircraft. But he did not need to fly the Lightning, he just needed
to taxi it on a disused runway while flipping switches. Rather than wait for the test pilot they
decided to have Taffy Holden operate the plane, which was only supposed to taxi in 30 to 40 yard
bursts. They used runway 36 which was closed, the plane did not need to fly so the canopy
was removed, a land rover nearby would keep in contact with the tower and keep them apprised
of each test. All Taffy had to do was taxi the plane a few dozen yards while flipping switches
and then make notes. The electricians would then decipher the notes to identify the location
of the fault. Having never been in the cockpit of a Lightning and never flown a jet fighter,
Holden did not even know how to start the engine, so one of his engineers gave him a short briefing
on the operation of the engine and the throttles. Strapped in, Holden made his notes on the switches
before the test, signaled to the land rover for clearance for their 30 to 40 yard jaunt, throttled
the plane up and let off the brake. He described the initial punch as “remarkable” as you might
expect, but managed to throttle back and apply the brake in the 30 yards that was expected. As
he later said of the first test “So far, so good.” Now Holden moved some switches and took notes
and planned for the second attempt. The land rover contacted the tower for clearance and he
throttled up again. But this time it did not go so well. As he throttled up, the plane shook
against the brakes, but this time he throttled a little bit too far and the shaking caused the
throttle to push past the gate locks for reheat. When taking off with the reheat, the throttle had something called a gate lock which was
designed to hold the engine in reheat, so in essence, all the sudden Taffy Holden
was the bullet being fired from the gun. To throttle back from reheat the pilot has to push
back keys that are located behind the throttle, but Holden had never used these keys and
only even knew of them because the engineer had briefly mentioned them in the five-minute
briefing. And Holden did not have time to search as there were more immediate problems just in
front of him. Having been told that he was only going to use another 40 yards of runway, the
tower had cleared a fuel Bowser and trailer to cross the runway to fuel an awaiting C-130. Now
zipping down the runway, Holden's first problem was not colliding with the Bowser. He just missed
it, but after that runway 36 ran across the main duty runway and a de Havilland Comet of the RAF
Transport Command was taking off down that runway. The Comet narrowly passed ahead of him marking
a second near-death experience in mere seconds, and he was still on the runway! But
another problem was coming up quickly, the runway was running out. Still without
time to find the keys that would allow him to throttle down, and with not enough room
anyway Holden did the only thing he could, he pulled back on the stick. As a stroke of good
luck the previous pilot had trimmed the aircraft for takeoff and Taffy Holden, who had never been
in a Lightning cockpit until a few minutes before, now airborne and as they say, “Saddled to a
skyrocket.” He had almost died on the ground three times yet was somehow still alive, and
now he just had to get back on the ground. His immediate concern was to try to keep the
base in view and look out for the Comet that had just recently taken off, but once airborne,
he was able to search for and find the keys that allowed him to throttle back. However he
was still in a pickle. Holden had no radio, no helmet and no canopy. He thought about
ejecting but he couldn't, the safety pins that were used to make the plane safe for servicing
were still in. His only choice was to land the plane. He described his first attempt to land as
“Ridiculous”, and he had to pull up and try again, the second attempt also failed and he had to
pull out again. He tried landing going the other direction and got the plane down on the
third attempt. Now the problem was stopping. He looked around for and found the handle for the
breaking parachute, but it did not slow him as much as he wanted. What he did not realize is
that unlike the Tiger Moth and the Chipmunk, the Lightning had a nose wheel. The planes on
which he had trained all had tail wheels. He had landed like he had been trained, and in
doing so, had crushed the block containing the breaking chute cables. The braking chute
had dropped off as soon as it was deployed. He kept applying the handbrake and watching
the end of the runway get closer and closer, but managed to stop with about a hundred yards
to spare. The ground crewman, who had only before ever piloted single-engine trainers,
had landed the Lightning with minimum damage. At first Holden was afraid that the
incident might cost him his career, or at very least his pilot wings, but while
everyone agreed that he should have waited for a qualified Lightning test pilot, they
also agreed that he hadn't actually broken any rules. Taffy Holden continued with the
Royal Air Force until retirement. Eventually engineers did figure out the fault that was
going on with the plane. It seems that one of the circuits originally had had a ground test
button installed, and while later on in the design the button was removed, the wires were
still there, and those were causing the short, and that shows the complexity of the plane that
Taffy Holden and his crew had to keep flying. Taffy Holden eventually ended up spending a
couple of years in the hospital dealing with emotional issues. He said that while he always
understood the technical aspects of his flight, he had never really sat and dealt with
the emotional stresses that came from such a terrifying 12 minutes. He said the entire
experience gave him a much better understanding of people who might need the same kind of help
after similar unfortunate occurrences. And that might be the best lesson from the entire
tale. Taffy Holden passed away in 2016, and the airplane Lightning F1 XM135 is
today on display at the Imperial War Museum at RAF Duxford. In my opinion,
a great museum well worth a visit. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the History
Guy, short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long. And if you
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