(Image: The Aviation Photo Company, reproduced with permission)
Like any aircraft, the English Electric Lightning‘s spell in RAF service from the 1960s to the 1980s was bound to produce some incredible stories of derring do. The Lightning Association, which keeps airframe XR724 alive, hosts a selection of amazing tales on its website, while one of the best known is that of an engineer who accidentally took off while testing a Lightning’s engines! Thankfully he survived, as did the aircraft, which can now been seen at the Imperial War Museum.
Another strange story that may not be so well known, however, concerns Lightning F.1A XM170, the mortal remains of which are pictured above on the fire dump at RAF Swinderby in 1975. This early production Lightning has the distinction of only ever taking to the skies once, on September 2, 1960. The flight, from the factory at Samlesbury to the test facility at Warton, Lancashire, took just 14 minutes, after which the aircraft was grounded forever.
(Image: author unknown, via the English Electric Fan Club. Picture shows Lightning production)
According to incident report number 142413, Lightning XM170 had suffered mercury contamination while on the production line at English Electric Aviation’s Samlesbury plant. This went undetected, however, until the aircraft’s first and only flight, when a suspicious white fungus began to appear in various locations around the airframe. In a slightly different account, the Lightning Association states that the jet was “written off after a heavy landing and subsequent mercury spillage at the end of its first flight.”
Either way, XM170 was immediately quarantined and remained in isolation for five years. It was eventually removed in 1965 and sent to No. 9 School of Technical Training at RAF Newton, Nottinghamshire, as ground instructional airframe 7877M.
The following year Lightning XM170 moved for the final time. Placed on the dump at RAF Swinderby in Lincolnshire, the unfortunate aircraft survived just over a decade as a training aid for firefighters. In 1977, what must have been the most unproductive Lightning in RAF history was finally scrapped.
Keep reading – discover more Lightning articles here.
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