5 - Lightning
Issue 5 - English Electric Lightning: Contents
30 July 2010
Going supersonic... Dawn of the Lightning... A Pilot's perspective... Thoroughbred Fighter Station... Lightning weapons system... Lightning F3 cockpit... The 'Hole on the Wall'... 'Bee' - test pilot of the ultimate British fighter... Lightning F6 in detail... 'Gas guzzlers'... Binbrook - the Lightning years... Fighting the Lightning...
Issue 5 - English Electric Lightning: Editors Introduction
29 July 2010.
It was a balmy autumnal morning at RAF Swinderby in Lincolnshire on
17 October 1984. That was the date of my passing out parade from basic recruit training in the Royal Air Force, and while we were promised the customary flypast, you weren’t told what aircraft it would be carried out by. I was hoping for something ‘tasty’.
Issue 5 - English Electric Lightning: The 'Hole in the Wall'
28 July 2010.
A special preview feature from Aviation Classics - English Electric Lightning - Sqn Ldr Clive Rowley MBE RAF Ret’d recalls in present tense an incident in Lightning F2A XN789 where hours spent training in the simulator paid off.
Issue 5 - English Electric Lightning: Eject! Eject!
27 July 2010.
The story behind a famous photograph of an ejection from a Lightning. - The photograph opposite was taken by Jim Meads on 13 September 1962. It was published in newspapers all around the world at the time and, as it was so widely seen, it naturally caught the attention of manufacturer Martin-Baker.
Current Issue: Lockheed P-38 Lightning
On January 27, 1939, Lockheed test pilot Ben Kelsey took the prototype XP-38 Lightning into the air for the first time. The big, twin-engined, twin-boomed fighter was to become one of the most easily identifiable fighters of the Second World War, and was to be the only US fighter aircraft to remain in production throughout the conflict. Its unusual design had a number of advantages. The guns, being grouped close together in the nose, gave the P-38 a tremendous concentration of firepower. The tricycle undercarriage made ground handling simple when compared with the tailwheel designs common to the period. The P-38 was used across the world, undertaking long range fighter escort, fighter-bomber and reconnaissance missions in Europe as well as across the Pacific and Far East.
This issue of Aviation Classics tells the whole story of this ground breaking aircraft, as well as the people behind the development and operational success of this beautiful machine.
PLUS:
• Next issue on sale: 30th March 2012
