English Electric Lightning -Supersonic Interceptor

Kinsley - have you got nothing positive to say then. At the time, green issues were not so important.

I appreciate you spending your time making pointless calculations however.

did you know that monster burns 65 car tanks of fuel per minute when the afterburners are lit?

Error! Refers to 1,400 mph as "Mach 1.8." True at sea-level, but Lightning reaches 1,400 at 40,000 ft. where speed of sound is typically 660 mph. Therefore 1,400 mph is Mach 2.12 at that altitude. Needless to say, no manned aircraft reaches 1,400 mph at sea-level.

Thanks, Please pass message to Jim, I recently made contact with Vic Lockwoods family and a couple of other folk who appeared in Test Pilot.They all bought Test Pilot from me. My DVD copy is still available for a nominal fee on two DVD's

Jim Ludford is a true Brit. An ace and a daredevil and a motorbike fanatic rolled into one. Two of my uncles from Preston helped design the Lightning. Jim is a recent neighbour of mine. Great great video.

Finnish pilots miss the russian built mig-21's for their superior speed and acceleration -- the pure power -- over american F-18's.

1.46 "an alternative form of vertical take-off". Awesome!

Contact me for a copy of this excellnt series, (3 hours)

Ah yes, that would be like having a selection of modern sports cars but chosing the E-Type Jag for that special drive on a sunny afternoon. Like the guy said, "Its good fun, its the type of thing you look forward to".

Amazing..they had all those Tornadoes, Harriers and Jaguar's sitting on the tarmac, yet they all still wanted to fly the old Lightning. :-D

A favourite trick get up takeoff speed, stick back and light both afterburners.Now the afterburners in the lightning occasionally used to "wet start", not light up immediately and if one did that you'd end up looking a bit silly. One day a pilot tried this only to have _both_ afterburners wet start. He found himself slowly sinking backwards onto the runway in an expanding cloud of fuel vapour. The next thing that happened was a fireball explosion out of which the lightning emerged vertically!

f111 was not a patch on the tsr2,we sold out to the yanks.

no fly-by-wire,micro-chipped software in this seat of the pants fighter.its technology introduced hands-on-stick button info for its radar and weapons system

last of the brits-and the best!

the 15 is a much larger bird, better armed, more surveillance/tagetting hardware, the lightning's great speed came at the expense of control surface, range, and payload, actually now that i think about it i've never even seen a lightning with a payload, it seems more like an intermediate between the 15 and 16,

otester it aint labuor or cons-try as asking the yanks!

name abetter bit of aeronautical,designer and engineering masterpiece that survived the tsr2!

Have the full series of Fighter Pilot ( Test pilot ) on v.c.r. and watch now and again Is this your own work ?

Sorry - make that 'nearly bought the F111 instead'.

Matrixwade,
A Lightning T.5. beat the F-15 to 30,000 feet. Not bad for an aircraft that went out of service 19 years ago. When it was carted off to the scrapyard it was still the best point-to-point interceptor in the world. It went like bloody hell!

DVD is still available from me.

Otester is right. The greatest enemy of British aeronautical inovation and technical excellence is a raggy arsed Labour government. They scrapped TSR2 and we bought the F111 instead. A good aircraft in itself but a piss-poor substitute for what we should have had.

I guess you mean software for the F-15? I dont think the Lightning had any processors in the normal way of thinking, all engine controls were reactive to altitude/temperature/input etc. Must have been a heavy workload Eh?

Read an article from a pilot who'd had experience in both the lightning and the f-15(prior to the software upgrade to increase throttle response).
Said the lightning was more enjoyable, and had better acceleration. The f-15 at the time as a bit lagging in throttle responsiveness.
Lightning was also said to be a more seat of the pants experience, although like most british aircraft since the war, had a compact cockpit.

the avro arrow would have been great. but so would the TSR2.