The British fighter that could exceed Mach 1 in a vertical climb

the english electric lightning was developed to bring the raf into the supersonic age it was an aircraft that even in its prototype stage broke the sound barrier and very very quickly as development increased it was able to fly at twice the speed of sound in fact the aircraft itself had such a power to weight ratio that it could actually stand on its tail and exceed the speed of sound in a vertical climb it was an incredible leap forward in performance and technology and our aircraft here it's got a very interesting story but on one particular occasion it was accidentally flown by an engineering officer a non-supersonic pilot taffy holden [Music] want to fly a lightning want to occupy the single seat in the single seater all-weather night and day high-flying supersonic supernormal lightning the development of jets and jet technology had been pioneered by the british aircraft industry from the very early days with aircraft such as the gloucester meteor entering service before the end of the second world war britain really did have the edge over pretty much everyone else in the world and it comes as a bit of a surprise that some of this cutting-edge technology would be sold to the russians an engine was sold at the request of the russian government and this engine was reverse engineered and put into the mig-15 and unfortunately it was the mig-15 when used in korea against royal australian air force gloucester meteors that proved the error of selling the russians this engine in britain the miles m52 was envisaged as the first aircraft that would break the sound barrier unfortunately it was scrapped and a lot of the technology found its way into the american aircraft industry but shortly after the scrapping of the m52 english electric began development on what would become the lightning the raf up to that point had been flying subsonic aircraft such as the hunter with the first flight of the english electric p1 or as it would later become the lightning the raf moved into the supersonic age despite its exotic configuration i mean 60 degrees of wing sweep was way out in those days nobody's ever seen an airplane like that before and there were lots of dark theories about how it would become unmanageable and its stability would be questionable and so it turned out to be absolutely first class very docile very easy to fly providing you change your sights a bit and when you were used to doing a final approach at about 90 or 100 knots in this airplane you were doing your final approach to 180 and touching down to 150 so it was a bit faster but all that all that really meant was that you needed a bit more runway to land it on the thought behind the lightning really was that it would be used as a point interceptor much like the spitfires and hurricanes had done during the battle of britain defending our shores against a potential enemy the english electric lightning would be doing just the same initially it was designed to guard the v bomber bases the house the vulcan the victor and the valiant fleet the nuclear deterrent but the lightning would go on to end up providing a role in germany and around the world as well so the lightning pilots were trying to devise some tactic that could be used to get a lightning up to sixty thousand feet that chased these very high level russian aircraft coming over doing photography and what they would do was fly along that thirty 35 40 000 feet full throttle until they got up to maximum speed and then they would pull back hard leaving it at full throttle and use the momentum to get up and they could just about stagger up to 60 000 feet before they started to fall away again and i find it absolutely incredible the english electric lightning will go on to be britain's last home designed supersonic fighter and really the roots of this go down to the 1957 infamous white paper issued by duncan sands who believed that the future of air interception would be done by ground-launched rockets and really it meant that the lightning was never fully developed beyond the pure interceptor aircraft that it became the aircraft would see production in a number of main variants and our aircraft here being the f1 the first post-pre-production version that would see service survived around about 10 years or so in service after its fortuitous landing by taffy holden our aircraft here arrived at duxford in 1974 but the final examples retired from raf service in 1988. the mantle of raf defence will be handed over at that point to the fighter version of the tornado and quite a few pilots who transitioned from the lightning to the tornado at that time were not hugely happy to be giving up their beautiful english electric lightnings it was a brilliant aircraft you know just it looked right and uh we're always saying if an airplane looks right it flies right uh it has been known it's called the aluminium death tube i think was a favorite name for it as the saying goes one pilot said he's they asked him what his flight were like he said well i was with it all the way to the ambree club and things like that you know it was a beast in all versions its main armament was a pair of air-to-air missiles on early versions as with our aircraft here they carried the fire streak a passive infrared homing missile or a heat seeker that was designed to shoot down incoming russian bombers as the aircraft were developed through and beyond the f3 to the f6 it would be the red top that would take over it had a better seeker head a heavier warhead and a better range giving the lightning far more punch but most versions would also be equipped with the 30 millimeter aidan cannon in the f3 version of the lightning the cannon was removed much to the upset of the pilots leading to them being retrofitted to keep the aircraft as a gun fighter as well as one capable of firing missiles with the lightning a lot of politics dogged its service life and its subsequent development it was originally envisaged to defend the v bomber bases in the uk as such range was not that crucial future versions of the lightning did increase their fuel tankage and some later versions could even carry over the wing ferry tanks but politics did indeed dog it and stopped it becoming an export success it was only ever exported to the royal saudi air force and the qa air force much later on and the reason for this really was that lack of range but in both of those air forces the lightning would find use not just as an interceptor but would be able to carry air to ground rockets and bombs if you look at a boat in the water there's a bow wave well a supersonic aircraft also has a bow wave in the air and the air in front of that is not the same air as it's behind it and so there were a lot of unknowns so there's an exploratory nature when you're dealing with something as advanced as that furthermore it had to be kept very small pushing a big aircraft supersonic is a lot there's a lot more power so you need a smaller aircraft and that means everything that's going to go in it is packed really tightly there is not a square inch of empty space in that aircraft that makes design much more difficult so the english electric lightning that we have on show here at duxford has quite an interesting story this aircraft having seen some squadron service was on the strength of 33 maintenance unit at raf linum they were trying to work out why the instruments were not working properly when the aircraft engaged reheat in the engines taffy holden was waiting for a test pilot to come and run it but a test pilot wasn't going to be available for some time and he wanted to get the aircraft off of his books his background was that he had some flying experience in his earlier raf career but had taken the engineering route so on the day in question he decided that he would have a go taffy holden climbs into the aircraft it's been trimmed for flight from its previous operation he straps himself in but he's not wearing the crash helmet or otherwise as you would expect for a pilot to be wearing he started up the engines to see what was happening and accidentally or possibly through a fault in the cockpit the engine went into reheat the aircraft then began to roll forwards and he couldn't get it disengaged as a result it was gathering speed and he's beginning to work out that he's got to do something he can either bring the undercarriage up and crash the aircraft possibly have to fly it his decision is made for him because as he approaches the duty main in use runway and raf transport commander havilland comet is taking off he's got very little time to think about it he pulls the stick back and he gets the aircraft airborne so oc ops rang me up and he said taff holden's airborne in a lightning so i said good i said i didn't know they had dual control he said no he's on his own he's on his own i said my god has he gone mad or something anyway i rocketed up to air traffic control and there was this lightning gently going around the circuit very sensible champ you see this wing commander going round the first thing one could see was that he hadn't got the hood back and you know you could see his hair sticking up i mean he hadn't got a helmet on you see what he did wasn't he very simple he went round and he changed it to the other runway which was in fact coming sort of going up to meet you if you know what i mean and he came in and i said my god i said he's going to make it no break shoot of course none at all and because the aircraft was terribly terribly light i mean he went the end the runway and he pulled up got out had he had a hat on i'm sure he would have saluted and he i was first up and he said i'm terribly sorry sir i said taff i said i'm not at all i've still got his original 765c which sort of says five minutes solo in the lightning you see which it was [Music] you

Channel: Imperial War Museums

Views: 1,835,347

Keywords: English Electric Lightning, Lightening, Lighting

Id: YqD2DKvYyJE

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 16 2022