The slowly fading art of flying and maintaining Cold War fighter jets
Great article, great photos.<p>No mention of airworthy Cold War jets is complete without Thunder City [1] which until a crash in 2009 flew the last English Electric Lightnings [2] in the world.<p>The Lightning is a fascinating aircraft for two reasons: first, its design, optimised for intercepting Soviet bombers, was highly original and efficient at the job, beating many records, and it remains the only production fighter with vertically stacked jet engines; second, it was the very peak of British military aerospace engineering, the last time British engineers could say they were ahead or at least on par with what came out of America, and its success caused the Americans to put pressure on the British government to cancel the very promising TSR-2 [3] program, destroy the production equipment, the plans and most of the airframes, in order to favour the export market for the F-111 (which the British didn’t even end up buying) and in the longer term to effectively destroy their main competition.<p>To give you an idea of the importance of the Lightning in the British aerospace community, I spent some time at Rolls-Royce in Derby back in the late 2000s, and the production manager managed to mention the Lightning and the techniques they derived from building the Avon engines that powered it in our first meeting, a half century later! Even Jeremy Clarkson has one in his garden [4]. The Lightning intercepted U-2s, flew as high as 88,000ft (27,000m), and in a NATO exercise in intercepting Concorde, was the only fighter to do so leaving F-15s, F-16s, F-14s, Mirages and F-104s behind.<p>A fun anecdote involves airframe XM135 (which is still preserved at Duxford if you are in the area, as well as an incomplete TSR-2) [5] [6]. A persistent electrical fault that appeared only when accelerating meant that the people working on the jet had to accelerate it. Whilst taxiing, with the ejector seat on safe, no canopy, and wearing only noise guards (so no radio), Wing Commander “Taffy” Holden accidentally went airborne. He had a few hours in a Tiger Moth but nothing comparable to the Lightning (“I had never flown a jet aircraft, no”), so he had to figure out how to fly it, and since he couldn’t eject, how to land it, which he did eventually after three attempts, contacting Air Traffic Control via hand signals.<p>On another note, the most performant Cold War aircrafts flying in the US today are probably the two FAA-approved brand new SU-37s from Pride Aircraft [7] which were sold by the Ukrainian Air Force with zero hours on either the engines or the airframes and completely Westernised with English language controls and modern electronics.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thunder_City" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thunder_City</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;English_Electric_Lightning" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;English_Electric_Lightning</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BAC_TSR-2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BAC_TSR-2</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo</a> (Jeremy&#x27;s jet fighter garden feature - Speed - BBC) “Do you stock Lightning jet fighters? Oh you do! Could you please leave one aside for me?”<p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=GfeN3FoZYj0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=GfeN3FoZYj0</a> (Wing Commander &quot;Taffy&quot; Holden ENGLISH ELECTRIC LIGHTNING Inadvertent Take Off Incident)<p>[6] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;forum.keypublishing.com&#x2F;showthread.php?20807-Lightning-XM135-inadvertant-flight-by-W-Cdr-Holden&amp;p=970933#post970933" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;forum.keypublishing.com&#x2F;showthread.php?20807-Lightnin...</a> (&quot;The flight in Taffy&#x27;s own words&quot;)<p>[7] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.prideaircraft.com&#x2F;flanker.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.prideaircraft.com&#x2F;flanker.htm</a>