English Electric Lightning.

[Cliphead]

I saw that, v.impressive. Said max height 60,000 but actual flight ceiling for the Lightning 'classified'.

Wondered who the guy was at first and thought he seemed a n0b but i warmed to him by the end. Good program.

Seeing that vertical takeoff though . I'd have lost my lunch there i think!!!!

English Electric Lightning - US$ 11,297; 6,472 pound sterling; EUR 9,500. Flight time about 40 minutes.

Linky

[stek]

The Vulcan.

Regularly embarrassed the Sceptics in War Games.....

Vulcan 607, great book about the bombing of Port Stanley airfield, 17 tankers refuelling each other and a lone Vulcan, gripping stuff!

[TimberWolf]

I happened to flick on the TV when I went to bed with my usual doomed attempt at watching TV for more than 5 minutes before falling asleep, and there was a documentary on about Apollo wives. The programme seemed pretty interesting so it's a pity I missed it all. Anyway, one bit I did see was the words spoken by, I think the first person to step off the 2nd Apollo lander to land on the moon. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what his not so famous words were?

[cojak]

Watched Brian Cox's prog last night.

He flew in an English Electric Lightning to 60,000ft to demonstrate the curvature of the Earth and the thin blue line of the atmosphere.

Spectacular aircraft for 1959.

We did good stuff in those days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning

Not to mention Blue Streak and Black Arrow.

Lions. Donkeys. Doomed. Etc.

Yes, I couldn't believe it at first...

My Dad was a Senior Armourer for Lightnings. He loved them. I'm not even sure that Harriers overtook them in his affection.

[NickFitz]

I happened to flick on the TV when I went to bed with my usual doomed attempt at watching TV for more than 5 minutes before falling asleep, and there was a documentary on about Apollo wives. The programme seemed pretty interesting so it's a pity I missed it all. Anyway, one bit I did see was the words spoken by, I think the first person to step off the 2nd Apollo lander to land on the moon. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what his not so famous words were?

Pete Conrad: "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but it's a long one for me!"

[TimberWolf]

Pete Conrad: "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but it's a long one for me!"

Bingo!

[NickFitz]

Bingo!

I'm reading Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon at the moment - didn't even have to get out of my seat to look it up

[DaveB]

Lightnings, very impressive as a man guided rocket, FA real use as warplane.

It only carried 2 early generation heat seeking missiles, and couldn't intercept low flying targets very well as it only had a pulse radar.

The Phantom F4 was a massive improvement, but not as much as TSR would have been. 8 missiles and a pulse doppler radar.

If we'd still had carriers that could accomodate them in 1982 the Argie air force would have toast.

It was designed as a high speed, high altitude interceptor aimed at defending the UK from the soviet bomber threat. It was never intended to act as a low level fighter but was designed specifically to take on large targets at altitude as part of the UK cold war defences.

[minestrone]

Does it have somewhere to put your bowl of pasta?

[Gibbon]

Agree with Stek, 607, top story. RAF ingenuity and guts.

Favourite trick during war games was to 'hide' two Buccs under the Vulcan wings. Nasty surprise for a lone interceptor expecting an easy kill.

We tend to be very sneaky when it comes to war games. On a exercise out in Alaska the septics were protecting Tornado GR1s which we were attacking with Tornado F3s. The septics kept engaging the GR1s much to our amusement. They then put a briefing out that if the Tornado had external fuel tanks it was a GR1. One of our aircrew got wind of this and got us to put external tanks on our F3s. Well the F3s flew straight through the septic fighter screen and 'shot' the GR1s to pieces.

The sceptics really didn't see the funny side