Ever wondered what the cockpit of a SR-71 Blackbird looks like?

HAL9000

Chalky said:

Full throttle for 6 minutes in a Lightning and you could be over 10 miles up, doing about 1500mph!

In a glider as your fuel has run out.

If you get it back on the ground then you must book it in for a service. For every hour of flight it needed at least 50 man-hours of maintenance, or rather more depending on the flight regime.

Love the Lightning as a flying machine but as a real weapon it was almost useless.

Didn't some RAF wit describe the Lightning as 'optimised for defending its own airfield'?

ICBM

Bear in mind it had only one mission - to intercept incoming Russian bombers before they were in range to launch stand-off missiles, shoot down as many as it could and that was it. Even getting home again was probably of secondary importance.

Chalky

HAL9000;1095625" said:

Chalky said:

Full throttle for 6 minutes in a Lightning and you could be over 10 miles up, doing about 1500mph!



In a glider as your fuel has run out.



If you get it back on the ground then you must book it in for a service. For every hour of flight it needed at least 50 man-hours of maintenance, or rather more depending on the flight regime.



Love the Lightning as a flying machine but as a real weapon it was almost useless.


















Didn't some RAF wit describe the Lightning as 'optimised for defending its own airfield'?

Very accurate description! Russian Bear crew would be maybe 5 hours into a 10 hour mission when a Lightning would turn up. They knew that within 15 minutes the Lightning pilot would be saying "Er, can you just stay there and don't do anything naughty while I go and get more fuel please?" )

chillidoggy

I think they added in-flight refueling capability and over-wing fuel tanks after a while.

They used to have a neat trick of climbing vertical, but I read it wasn't sustainable, not the fastest way to the service ceiling, and the optimum angle was something like 30 degrees.

They just look so aggressive, though. Awesome.

ICBM

Chalky said:

Very accurate description! Russian Bear crew would be maybe 5 hours into a 10 hour mission when a Lightning would turn up. They knew that within 15 minutes the Lightning pilot would be saying "Er, can you just stay there and don't do anything naughty while I go and get more fuel please?" )

In a real war situation it wouldn't have gone quite like that though…

Likewise the Vulcan crews who were told not to bother coming back if they were ever sent for real. That's why the in-flight refueling capability was dropped and had to be hastily reinstated for the Falklands. Russia was in range for a one-way trip so no need to worry about it.

nick79

Apparently a requirement for Sr71 pilots was that they had to be married, supposedly less chance of them defecting along with a top secret aircraft...

breakstuff

Love the Lightning.Used to see them flying over my house on a daily basis when I was a kid as Binbrook was only about ten miles away.I was gutted when they shut the base.

Also had all three V bombers,Starfighters,Mirages,F1-11's,Bacaneers,Hunters and various others flying around.Wonderful sight for a young kid especially when flying directly over the house at around 200 feet.

DesVegas

Aint war marvellous

Chalky

chillidoggy;1095947" said:

I think they added in-flight refueling capability and over-wing fuel tanks after a while.They used to have a neat trick of climbing vertical, but I read it wasn't sustainable, not the fastest way to the service ceiling, and the optimum angle was something like 30 degrees.They just look so aggressive, though. Awesome.

The overwing tanks increased range. And killed the climb rate, halved the top speed and limited manouevres to 4g!

Power to weight ratio was always less than 1 even when clean. But folks prefer the myth to reality.

gubble

I love these threads.

I'm a little young to have remembered seeing either the Vulcan or Lightning flying but think they're wonderful machines.

what gets me every time is that these things were a decade after WW2. How did we go from the spitfire to the lightening in ten years? it's insane 

ICBM

gubble said:

what gets me every time is that these things were a decade after WW2. How did we go from the spitfire to the lightening in ten years? it's insane 

Closer to twenty - 1936 for the Spitfire, 1954 for the Lightning - but there's only eleven years from the Lancaster to the Vulcan.

It was driven by World War II followed by Cold War necessity - almost unlimited amounts of money to throw at the problem and the best and brightest engineers working on them.

Even more impressive is that we went from the V2 to landing on the Moon in only 25 years, and only eight from the first man in space to the Moon.

Moss

ICBM said:

gubble said:

what gets me every time is that these things were a decade after WW2. How did we go from the spitfire to the lightening in ten years? it's insane 

Closer to twenty - 1936 for the Spitfire, 1954 for the Lightning - but there's only eleven years from the Lancaster to the Vulcan.

It was driven by World War II followed by Cold War necessity - almost unlimited amounts of money to throw at the problem and the best and brightest engineers working on them.

Even more impressive is that we went from the V2 to landing on the Moon in only 25 years, and only eight from the first man in space to the Moon.

The V1 to V2 in one year is mental enough

Chalky

The V2 was not developed from the V1. Completely different technologies.

impmann

If you want to see a Lightning... and hear one and feel the roar, then the examples they have at Bruntingthorpe do fast taxi runs (they would fly but the CAA have said 'no... too dangerous').

They also have a Victor, a VC-10, several Buccaneers, a couple of Hunters, a Comet, a Canberra, a Nimrod... and loads more.

Twice a year they hold open days where you can stand next to these planes on full power - you can't do that at airshows any more. There are cockpit tours and all sorts. Well worth a visit... I go every time. :-) Next one is on Bank Holiday Sunday in August.

Chalky

I think that is the CAA's job - to stop aircraft from flying if they are not airworthy

cacophony

"Didn't some RAF wit describe the Lightning as 'optimised for defending its own airfield'?"

we had a national air defence exercise in about 79/80 where a lot of the airspace was cleared so that the rest of the airforce could mount unannounced attacks on the air defence network.

 

the best thing i saw was a pair of jaguars hammering in at about 75 feet, with a brace of lightnings on their tail, the jags were absolutely flat out, reheat in, the lightnings were still in dry power, as they neared the airfield perimeter the two lightnings put the burners in and just shot past the jags like they were standing still!. 

(mind you the missiles the lightnings carried were 50's 60's tech. and totally unreliable bags of shite! so they probably wouldn`t have shot them down anyway. unless they used the guns, (which only the mk6 had)

Chalky

Jaguars must have had external loads. If both were clean the Lightning was only about 10% faster at low level.

ICBM

Chalky said:

I think that is the CAA's job - to stop aircraft from flying if they are not airworthy

Anyone know if they've now withdrawn the Vulcan's flight certificate after the unauthorised aerobatics on the final flight?

cacophony

Chalky said:

Jaguars must have had external loads. If both were clean the Lightning was only about 10% faster at low level.

jags always had two 1200 ltr fuel tanks on the inboard pylons. and most of the time a couple of 'seeblies' (cbls) on the outboards. 

plus i saw this before the jags had the engine upgrade.

a quick airforce joke...

Q. why do jags take off?...

A. because the world's round.

(after the lightnings were scrapped i moved on to the jag fleet and spent 7 years on two jag squadrons, one in germany and one here in the uk)

Chalky

cacophony;1096808" said:

Chalky said:

Jaguars must have had external loads. If both were clean the Lightning was only about 10% faster at low level.





jags always had two 1200 ltr fuel tanks on the inboard pylons. and most of the time a couple of 'seeblies' (cbls) on the outboards. plus i saw this before the jags had the engine upgrade.

a quick airforce joke...

Q. why do jags take off?...

A. because the world's round.

(after the lightnings were scrapped i moved on to the jag fleet and spent 7 years on two jag squadrons, one in germany and one here in the uk)

Ha! Remember the old RAF recruitment ad on tv that ended with the rear view of a Jag accelerating down the runway in a blistering heat haze. Aggressive rotation then....cut to recruitment logo! You thought, yes better to edit it there than showing it inching itself off the runway )