When I Worked On Lightnings
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W.I.W.O.L. - Dean Bruce’s memories of 5 Sqn, 84-85
Greetings from a liney on 5 Squadron,
84-85. I was only there for a year but had
a riot. Loved it, best time in 15 years in
the RAF. What an
eye opener, my first squadron out of Cosford. Ancient FLMs and
single trade lineys who'd been around forever. I
still look back and laugh at some of the stunts the ‘old lads’ used to
pull, Avpin in the Zippo, checking the crackers while I was doing an
intake check - oh those little so and so's ( or words
to that effect). I don't know when they
pulled the 5 line hut down but there was some fantastic artwork on the
walls done by one of the lineys, a guy called
Gav Cafell.
Funny sights, I think it was Paul
Compton on one of the pans near the 5 Sqn standby line loxing a T-Bird.
All was quiet in the line hut when we saw a bright blue flash and then a
huge bang, followed by said Mr Compton staggering about. As you
can imagine, we all feared the worst, but he appeared to be none the
worse for wear. By the time he got back to the line hut he was
fuming - he was quite a hirsute chap and the lox bang had singed all his
hairs, leaving little white stubbly ends.
Another funny, we had a visit by some
space cadets (sorry ATC). They wouldn't let us have any girlies to
play with (they were reserved for the firemen with their blue suede
wellies and green string vests) but sent us instead a couple of young
lads. One of them couldn't have been any more than 5 feet tall,
and as you know the gap between the top of the ladder and the wing root
is a sizeable step, a step too far for our hero! He missed the
step, ended up straddled across the Red Top, slid round that and ended
up on the deck. You can imagine the shock on the poor chap’s face.
Needless to say we were filled with compassion and total hysterics -
absolutely brilliant lad, I hope he joined up, because the service
needed more like him, never stopped smiling even after that, and
reckoned it was the best day ever.
The kites were an absolute pig to work on
but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
I never did get the full story on why AK had metal plates welded to its
wing roots and ridiculously high G-meter readings. Apparently the
armourers couldn't harmonise the guns because the airframe was twisted.
I remember laughing ourselves daft on Q when
they called a Taceval - oh the joys of wearing that armband then having
to do a scramble wearing nothing but a towel. Even got to go to
Waddington for a fortnight while they resurfaced the runway after a
Buccaneer dropped a couple of tons of fuel on the runway then missed the
RHAG with his hook and dug the surface up; nice of him.
We had the BAe Lightning over for a
visit and the jockey was most put out when we complained that he was
miles too high when he beat up the airfield; he promptly jumped back in
and buzzed us again at ridiculously low height. I'm not sure what
airfield nav aid was opposite us, but he was lower than that.
I was reading about the T-Bird that slid
off the runway in ‘84 coming back from Jever; I don't think the bomb
dump ever emptied so fast as the kite slid to a stop not 20 feet from
the bomb dump fence.
Not surprisingly the passenger was a little white and
shakey when the jockey admitted he'd thought about getting out
but checked the speed and realised he was going too slow, so just had to
stay along for the ride.
Happy days, great site!
It's strange, but even now if anyone asks
and I tell them I worked on Lightnings, they tend to go a bit misty eyed
and wow seems to come into the conversation.
I would love to get along to Binbrook and see the next taxy runs
whenever they are. My address is 3
Stevenson Close, Heighington, Lincoln LN4 1GP, e-mail
Dtb3stev@aol.com. I'm not too far and have driven over to Binbrook
a couple of times and saw ‘724 parked outdoors good to hear she's in out
of the weather. I'm a datacomms/IT man now so if
there's anything I can do to help let me know.
Dean Bruce
W.I.W.O.L.
C/Tech Neil Glen (in the above photo) 74 Squadron, 5 Squadron
W.I.W.O.L.
Having served four years at RAF St Athan, I arrived
at Binbrook (where else, having come from pulling Buccaneers and
Canberra's apart?) one cold winter’s night in 1978, having diverted to
miss the snow drifts blocking the road from Market Rasen and wondering
where the hell I was going, to start my four year stint on ASF and ASSF.
So, there I was some time later, propping the bar up in
the Corporals' club when an acquaintance of mine 'Fruit' Newberry (never
did know his first name but what else was he to be called with a surname
of Newberry?) told me this tale.
Evidently he had seen a Lightning off from 11
Squadron as follows. He indicated to the pilot to
start the No.1 engine and with a Whirr and a Phutt! it failed.
Let’s go for a second wet start indicates our intrepid airman.
Again, Whirr, Phutt! and no start. Now everyone who
has been involved with Lightnings knows that a third attempt without
waiting for the Avpin to drain sufficiently could result in the pilot
getting a swift kick up the ass with the engine starter pod ejecting
from the airframe via the bifurcated duct and taking the radome with it.
So 'Fruit' duly indicates a start of No.2 and guess
what? Again a Whirr Phutt! and no start. Now
'Fruit' was fully exasperated and as he said to me, 'I knew there was
nothing wrong with the kite, it had to be pilot error.' So
our airman again applied the cockpit ladder, climbed up, opened the
canopy, gently eased himself in front of the pilot, switched on the H.P.
cocks and says 'Shall we try again, Sir?'
Sure enough, second attempt on No.2 is successful
and so to No.1 and the aircraft duly departs. 'I want
to see this one in,’ says 'Fruit', not having to wait too long as
Lightnings without refueling don't stay up too long. So
Fruit duly waves the aircraft home, attaches and climbs the ladder
saying to the pilot, 'How about a crate of beer for the line crew?,
because if I tell someone else it may well cost you a lot more in the
officers' mess tonight.' Cheeky so and so, but guess what
turned up at the line crew shed the following day. Hope
I’ve got this right, ‘Fruit’ but if you happen to read it, I'm sure you
will put me right. Regards from Ian.
Ian Lucas, Rigger, ASF and ASSF, 1978 - 1982
W.I.W.O.L.
My own experience of Lightnings was at Tengah
after 74 came out in - without checking - 1968.
As a Supplier who'd done the LOX course, I used to fill the 70 (or was
it 75?) litre LOX trolleys that 74 brought to the gas compound. Great
fun, LOX - used to catch insects, bung them into the hose- purge-bucket,
then tip them out & whack them with the hide-faced mallet provided for
releasing couplings! Nasty boys! I was also the Demands Clerk on 26DK
later in my tour.
I was 'chosen' when Fg Off Thompson was killed in 'J' to be part of the
crash guard. The aircraft came down a couple of miles from Tengah on the
only bit of semi-dry land next to a Kampong.
The canopy was some way away, as was the seat, & young Thompson was
found dead in a swamp. It was thought he was concussed, separated from
the seat, but drowned when he hit the ground.
He'd been in the circuit with Sqn Ldr Carter, & reported both reheat bay
fire captions on. Carter fell back, saw fire & shouted for Thompson to
get out. being a young man of 21 or so, Thompson thought he could
complete the circuit & save his aircraft.
The crash guard was set up to take shifts on the site, & we used to sit
in a vehicle cab at night. If you shut the window, you sweated, open it
& the mossies came for dinner. Recovery began, & a towed pump trailer
brought in from the fire section to drain the water-filled crater where
the nose was. Behind it, you could see the top engine, but the other was
underground. No sooner had the crater been emptied than the monsoon rain
came & filled it up again!
We erks were told to fish around in the gloop for bits & pieces so that
the investigators would miss nothing. Lovely job, feeling for bits of
jagged Lightning. Health & safety hadn't been invented, so when back on
guard the second night I found my right foot had begun to itch
intolerably. I tore off my canvas & rubber jungle boot & rubbed the
foot. Instantly, I felt an excruciating stinging, burning pain. Ouch!
On relief a couple of hours later, I went back to Tengah on the ration
wagon & got in a shower pronto, where I discovered the whole of the top
of my foot was a huge, liquid-filled, puffy blister. I managed to get my
flip-flops on, & cycled down to Sick Quarters.
I ended up spending 4 days in the air-conditioned ward under treatment.
The Docs didn't really give me a diagnosis, but I reckon that, mixed in
with the mud & wreckage was something pretty nasty - maybe battery acid,
maybe Avpin, Hydraulic fluid? Who knows - but it gave me a memorable
chemical burn.
The Inquiry found that a faultily-connected fuel line had allowed AVTUR
to leak under pressure & pool in the reheat bay, where it ignited. The
uncontrolled fire swiftly burned through magnesium alloy control-rods, &
as the tail surfaces were spring-loaded the elevators defaulted to throw
the nose up, & the aircraft stalled & fell sideways, at which point
ejection was initiated. All very sad. I've got some slides taken at the
crash site, & also one of a Lightning on the line at Tengah, so one
day........
Tony Kerrison
SGT. (RAF)
W.I.W.O.L.
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 colleagues 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 Air force 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 sootie [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.
To those people who maintained the Lightning fleet, during the 80's, few aircraft can have caused so much heartache as XS459, one of Binbrook's "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 re-skinning 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 never cured] 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 Sdn]
W.I.W.O.L.
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, chute less 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 nose wheel!!!
Phil Wallis
CHIEF TECH (RAF)
W.I.W.O.L.
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)