refuelling. On September 1, I took XM169
to practise refuelling from the Canberra, but
just ahead of me another aircraft slightly
damaged its HDU basket, so I had to settle
for holding formation on the Canberra and
practising approaches. From that I learned a
great deal about the aerodynamic in uences
of the fuselage on the basket. On September
5, now with all the necessary permissions, I
did wet and dry hook-ups with the Canberra
for about two hours over the Solent at
around 30,000ft, which was then obviously
exceptional endurance for the Lightning.
“I was then supposed to start the formal
Fighter Command sponsored test of aerial
refuelling, but at almost the same time the
F.1As were grounded for a major hydraulic
and re risk modi cation programme. AFDS
did not have F.1As at the time and it was
nearly nine months before the rst modi ed
examples were returned to service. As
soon as the initial aircraft arrived at RAF
Wattisham, [Suffolk] I was detached there to
work with 56 Sqn. There we used 214 Sqn
Valiants from RAF Marham. They showed
me how to use the HDU, ran through the
required radio contacts and other tanking
techniques and on June 13, 1962 I did the
rst Valiant test with some 15 contacts.
“I talked with my boss at AFDS and
explained, in my opinion, the refuelling
task was not a complicated one, as long as
you followed the rules. At rst it was quite
intimidating having a large tanker aircraft in
close proximity, but if you had the correct
power setting, used the cuing points on the
Valiant, and ignored the basket it worked.
Trying to do it any other way saw the hose
and basket just bounce around. I learned as
much about tanking procedures by watching
the others do it as I did by doing it myself.Although there was a steep initial learning
curve the technique was quickly picked up.”
A lengthy ight was required to trial the
air refuelling procedures, so it was decided
to y non-stop to RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus.
John continued: “I suggested to my boss
that I remain at Wattisham and, rather than
taking one aircraft out to Cyprus myself, we
could train the squadron commander and
two other pilots. Myself and then OC, Sqn
Ldr Dave Seward, would take two Lightnings
out to Akrotiri and two different pilots bring
them back. Doing it that way extended thescope of the trial and we managed to quickly
get operational squadron pilots trained. I
remained at Wattisham until July 23 and
then we did the proving ight, which was
a 4hrs 20mins trip with frequent top-ups to
RAF Akrotiri. The two other pilots brought
them back to Suffolk a couple of days later
and then trained other squadron pilots.
Being a frontline unit, their experience grew
very rapidly, quickly overtaking mine and
they soon became the experts.”INTERCEPTING U-2s
With the advent of aeroplanes like the
Lockheed U-2, the RAF felt it needed to
develop the tactics for intercepting such
high- ying aircraft. No sooner had John
nished the air refuelling task when he
was given a classi ed project – to practise
intercepting U-2s. The aircraft had deployed
to Europe for the rst High Altitude Sampling
Program (HASP). As the deployment
was only for three-weeks, time was short.
“Everything happened quickly because of
the urgent timescale. First, I travelled to
visit Frankenstein & Sons at Newton Heath,
Manchester and was tted for a full pressuresuit, necessary because of the extremely high
operating altitudes we would work at. I went
to Warton to discover the Lightning’s weapons
and performance limits above the already
cleared 56,000ft. I didn’t get much information
about how it would perform at even higher
altitudes, as it simply had not been attempted.
There were similar responses when I asked
the same question of de Havilland, which
produced the Firestreak missile, and Rolls-
Royce about the engines, although the latter38 Aviation News incorporating Jets April 2018No.111 Sqn F.1A, XM214, was one of the Lightnings own by John
Mitchell in the U-2 interception trials. Hugh Trevor CollectionA 92 Sqn Lightning F.2. John assisted
with the unit’s weapons conversion onto
the Lightning at RAF Lecon eld in 1963.
Hugh Trevor CollectionA Lightning F.3 of 74 Sqn at RAF Leuchars, Scotland where John assisted both 74 and 23 Sqn
with conversion to this variant. The Aviation Photo Company36-40_lightning_cobraDC.mfDC.mfDC.indd 38 01/03/2018 19:17