Lightning Tales
Formerly Story of the Month
New Tales will be published on an as and when available basis. It would be greatly appreciated if readers could supply new material for inclusion in this page. If you have any Lightning Aircraft related tales that you wish to tell, please email them here
To keep you going while new material is collected, below is the archived stories index. Using the links you can access all the previous Story of the Month pages that have been published on the site since it was taken over by the Lightning Association.
June 2015
I was doing a ground tour at RAF Buchan in the mid 60's. On 23 August 1966, Leuchars QRA was launched for an X-ray track due east of Leuchars heading south. I happened to be the Q controller on duty. The intercept was successful and the pilots reported the ident in the approved format, ie. 'Formation 3 swept-shoulder-wing 4-engine jet bomber aircraft.'
I relayed this to the ADOC Controller. I was then asked to get the pilots to identify the target. I relayed the original report but that was not enough. The whole cycle was repeated with the pilots repeating, correctly, the ident, whereupon the Air Defence Commander came on my phone and, having identified who I was, said 'Tell them I want the type of aircraft in clear.'
I
apologised to the Lightning Leader and passed the message. I
held the phone near the radio speaker. 'Tell him they
are ******* Bisons' was the reply. I asked the ADC if he
had heard the answer. The phone was put down.
I never got any feedback on the incident, but if either of the pilots
should see this I would like a copy of any photographs. Maybe
other Leuchars pilots might have a copy of pictures, since it is a very
rare event.
Barry Mayner
Archive Index and Descriptions of the Lightning
| Archive Home |
| 2/03 |
3/03 |
4/03 |
5/03 |
6/03 |
7/03 |
8/03 |
9/03 |
10/03 |
11/03 |
12/03 |
| 1/04 |
2/04 |
3/04 |
4/04 |
5/04 |
6/04 |
7/04 |
8/04 |
9/04 |
10/04 |
11/04 |
12/04 |
| 1/05 |
2/05 |
3/05 |
4/05 |
5/05 |
6/05 |
7&8/05 |
9/05 |
6/11| 9/11
| 12/11 |6/12|
12/12 | 1/13
| 1/14 | 9/14
| 3/15 |6/15|
2/03 - Northern Quick Reaction Alert Force - 'The Bear Hunt'
3/03 - Days of Thunder, Memories of a Line Chief, 5 Squadron Lightning's, 1967- 68
4/03 - The Loss of XM990
5/03 - How Not to Handle Recovery on Minimums!
6/03 - It Wouldn't Work for You Any More, Rudolf
7/03 - LIGHTNING v F-15
8/03 - Handle-Handling - Seat-Pan versus Face-Blind
9/03 - The Lightning Room or The Perils of Impulse Buying
10/03 - The Final Flight of XP693 and XR773 – In the UK!
11/03 - Foxbat Target
12/03 - Lightning v Santa - The Ultimate Confrontation
1/04 - Putting the Boot In - ‘Charlie’ Chan's Ejection from XR763
2/04 - Operation Corrugate - Quest for a Q-Shed
3/03/04 - The Last of the Lightning Pilots
4/04 - 'TEST PILOTS' by Wolfgang Späte
5/04 - The Revenge of the Swedes - A ‘Gripen’ Tale of Binbrook
6/04 - Transcript of the Cockpit Voice Recordings During the Loss of XR769
7/04 - The Lightning Pilot's Ten Commandments
8/04 - Memories of 111 Sqn & The Wattisham Lightning Song
9/04 - Ah Yes, I Remember it Well - LIGHTNING v MIRAGE 2000
10/04 - Lightning vs Concorde
11/04 - The Guinness Book of Lightning
12/04 - Tiger or Pussycat? - The English Electric Lightning
1/05 - T.4 Flying Display
2/05 - P.1 Supersonic Testing at Warton
3/05 - Big Bad Dog
4/05 - A Taceval Tale
5/05 - NATO Tiger Meet - Leuchars 1966
6/05 - Do Not Panic
7&8/05 - Letter from America – Bill Beardsley's Story
9/05 - EJECTION - A Lightning Detective Story
6/11 - Joe Dickerson's Memories of Lightnings at Coltishall
9/11 - 11 Sqdn Lightnings Visit 1st All Weather Fighter Wing of Beauvechain, Belgium in 1979
12/11 - An Unplanned Overnight Stop
6/12 - The Loss of Lightning F6 XS894
12/12 - Ejection in Saudi – Memories of ‘Magic Carpet’ and the RSAF
1/13 - Memories Of Air Fighting
Development Squadron by Brian Bamforth