When I Worked On Lightnings

Four stories at the moment.

W.I.W.O.L. No 1

When I was on Lightnings, back in 1978, being a member of Team 4 in the Aircraft Servicing Flight [ASF] at RAF Binbrook, we had just received our next Check 3 servicing off the conveyor belt and had parked it in our slot on day one.

At this time we were going through our short period of elation at having got rid of our last aircraft to a squadron after 3 months of hard slog ,climaxing in two weeks of unpaid overtime to get it out on time. We were all looking forward to the next two weeks in which we would rip the new one apart and go over it with a fine toothcomb, a relatively leisurely pace compared to the end of the servicing.

Anyway I digress, this new jet had just been parked and chocked, having come out of the storage flight [ASSF] it had no engines fitted so people were looking all over it to see what had been ‘Robbed’ off it, as spares were in short supply across the fleet at that time. I had just scrambled under from the back end and was chatting with some colleages when I heard and felt this almighty ‘CRASH’!

Not Two yards from me, just where I had come out from under the aircraft lay the 300 gallon VENTRAL TANK! As if rooted to the spot I just stood there as in what appeared to be in slow motion, 3 things happened:

a. Someone stood up in the cockpit and shouted “ I didn’t touch a thing!”

b. Someone else stuck their head out of the lower engine bay from the inter pipe area and said “What was that?”

c. 300 gallons of fuel started to flood the hanger floor at a rapid rate of knots!

Frantic attempts to build a dam from ‘chicken shit’ [oil absorbent cat litter] around this quickly expanding lake of fuel were taking place. It was quite fun just slashing open sacks of this stuff trying to contain the spillage [not as much fun having to sweep it all up again!] As anyone in the Airforce will tell you, whenever an aircraft crashes or an incident like this happens, what was a relatively deserted hanger is within sixty seconds full to bursting point with every man and his dog. From OC Eng Wing to Racasan Dan [the toilet cleaner] crawl out of the woodwork to glee over someone else’s misfortune or demand an explanation.

What Happened? Well it turns out it was a plumber [propulsion tradesman] pushing the interpipe that carries the jet efflux down to the reheat pipe backwards with his feet. His size tens had operated the cable mechanism that releases the ventral tank in flight! hey presto! - one cracked 300 gallon tank on the hanger floor!

Phil Wallis
CHIEF TECH (RAF)

W.I.W.O.L. No 2

To those people who maintained the Lightning fleet, during the 80's, few aircraft can have caused so much heartache as XS459, one of Binbrooks "T-Birds"

I was a member of the A.S.F. crash team and we had been tasked with carrying out a practice aircraft lift, at the rear of the A.S.F. hangar. The whole team was engrossed, when a shout came up, to look towards the main runway and there was a Lightning sliding gracefully down the runway on its belly.

You can imagine how quickly the crash gear came off the practice aircraft and eventually, a badly damaged aircraft was recovered. Despite major damage, the decision was taken to repair XS459 and a repair team from British Aerospace, carried out the major structural and reskinning repairs and then for some unknown reason, the aircraft was left to languish in the L.T.F. hangar for some two years.

At this time I was a member of Team 3 in A.S.F. [a legend of a team!!!] and the team consisted of such auspicious characters as Steve "Swiv" Wivell, Pete Cain, Colin "Tucker" Barlow , and Andy " Murph" Murphy, all lead by Chief Tech John Townsend [readers may remember that the Flight Sergeant at this time, was Pete " I'm the hardest man in this hangar" Belk] I was proud to be a member of what must have been the finest aircraft servicing team in human history and for our efforts we were rewarded with returning XS459 to flying condition.

One can imagine the state of this aircraft because at this time, spares were difficult to come by and XS459 had been used as proverbial Christmas tree. Half of the aircraft was missing and enterprising engineers had stripped XS459 of most everything useable and all without the paperwork.

After eleven months of work, we discovered a major fuel leak from the wing centre section and despite our best efforts we were unable to cure it. It was a sad day for all of us [honestly!!] when XS459 was towed from A.S.F. minus its No1 engine [the bottom one] so that the Binbrook fuel leak team could attempt to cure the leak.

Eventually, the leak was reduced to manageable proportions [though nevercured] and the aircraft finally took to the skies again. It's first air test was quite an eventful affair, because the ram-air valve flew open during the high speed run and the pilot had to make an emergency descent, after the cockpit vent valve had failed at 50,000 ft.

Despite these hiccoughs XS459 continued to fly during the rest of my time at Binbrook and it was with some pride that I used to see it towed onto the line at the start of a days flying [and still leaking fuel!!]

Colin "Harry" Parry [ex Sgt, A.S.F. and 5 Sdrn]

W.I.W.O.L. No 3

When I was on Lightning’s, I was attending a course in the Station Education Centre at RAF Binbrook. Busy doing percentages I was interrupted by the station crash alarm [a continuous test-card like tone] over the station tannoy, swiftly followed by “STATE ONE STATE ONE!“ spoken in a distressed manner. A `State One` means an aircraft has actually crashed on or in the vicinity of the airfield. Emergency services react immediately [as one would expect] as aircrew or passengers could be trapped etc.

I was of course very curious as to what had crashed and word soon came through that it was a Lightning from 11Sqn [my sqn!] had crashed just outside the airfield perimeter fence opposite the QRA [Quick Reaction Alert] sheds. The pilot had ejected safely and landed on the airfield itself.

Being an aircraft from my own sqn I was naturally concerned as all aircraft engineers are when an aircraft crashes as to what had caused the crash and more importantly was it something we [engineers] had done. Aircraft crashes mean a mandatory Board of Inquiry to determine the cause of the crash and to apportion blame if human error was a factor.

The summary of this WIWOL is a thankfully a humorous one, the cause of the crash was determined to be that the ventral tank had failed to empty, this caused the centre of gravity to shift out of normal and the aircraft had stalled when the aircraft was placed in an out of envelope attitude.

The humorous aspect is that at the same time I heard that Tannoy message my colleagues back at work had seen the whole thing. They heard the `BANG` of the pilot ejecting and looked up to see the abandoned hapless aircraft coming down to earth in a flat spin “ falling like a leaf” was an apt description I was given, then the inevitable CRASH and FIREBALL over the other side of the airfield.. Half a second after impact a Sergeant inside the flight line hut panicked, he grabbed a set of tractor keys from their hook, threw them at a colleague of mine and shouted “ GET A TRACTOR AND TOWING ARM OVER THERE { the crash] NOW!!!!”. To which my friend calmly replied “what exactly do you expect me to tow back?......the NOSEWHEEL??!!!!”

There was a spontaneous and resounding collective burst of laughter as people pointed to the crash scene, the pawl of rising black smoke, a 30 foot deep chasm of molten disintegrated metal that had been a Lightning 20 seconds ago and a pilot floating down in his parachute!. We all saw the funny side though he didn’t.

It was the result of instinctive reaction, as whenever lesser emergencies occur [burst tyres, chuteless landings] normal procedure is to dispatch a recovery team to tow the aircraft back to the hanger. Parts of that Lightning are undoubtedly still 30 feet down, who knows in 50 years time some aviation archaeologists will excavate the site and find the nosewheel!!!

Phil Wallis
CHIEF TECH (RAF)

W.I.W.O.L. No 4

A brief WIWOL story about the typical high morale and esprit-de-corps that existed at Binbrook. All new Lightning pilots were converted to the Lightning on the Lightning Training Flight [LTF}. The training culminated in the students first solo flight in the type. After the sortie the aircraft taxied back to the flight line and shut down.

Whilst the pilot spent a couple of minutes checking everything was switched off and taking in the fact that he had survived his first solo trip! The flight line engineers-liney’s were busy at the back of the aircraft fitting a new brake parachute in double quick time!

Why?

Well as the pilot climbed out and came down the access ladder one of the old sweats would shout “ Sir, you forgot to use your brake chute”. “What?” came the reply as he was taken round the back of the aircraft and shown an unused brake chute!!!

Some twigged straight away, others walked off scratching their helmets!

Phil Wallis
CHIEF TECH (RAF)