warned I might lose reheat or power at too
steep an angle of climb.
“Fighter Command told us if there
were too many early morning overland
supersonic bangs, the trial would have to
be abandoned. The profile we worked out
was an accelerating-climbing one. It was
expensive on fuel but largely reduced the
effects of the sonic bangs. When I visited
Farnborough to test my pressure suit, I took
the opportunity to find someone who knew
about the propagation of sound waves and
sonic booms. He made it quite clear that
by accelerating over the sea and pointing
the nose inland the ‘bang’ could be directedaway from populated areas, out over water.
“By then the situation was urgent as
the U-2 detachment to Upper Heyford was
already flying a sortie each day. I visited and
saw the three aircraft and met the five pilots.
They only told me about their flight track and
timing, which were fixed, but told me nothing
about their speed or altitude, we had to work
that out. By then we were into the fourth day
of a three-week deployment.“The U-2s took
off at 0700hrs and
returned about
1600hrs. On departure
the U-2s climbed to
altitude, heading up
the spine of England,
leaving land at points
roughly between Elgin
and Cape Wrath in
Scotland. We had a
fighter controller on the
staff of AFDS, so we
worked out the profile
together. He consulted
with other controllers at
Neatishead, Boulmer,
Buchan and Saxa
Vord, so they all knew what was going on
in their airspace. To reduce the possible
sonic boom effects, we deployed from
Coltishall to operate from RAF Middleton
St George on Teesside, alongside the then
Lightning Conversion Squadron (LCS).
We used Wattisham F.1As for the trial with
an engineering officer and about a dozen
ground crew.
“The first intercept was on October 18,- I started at 25,000ft then climbed to
about 50,000ft at Mach 1.7, turning about
20 miles behind the U-2. When the U-2s
returned in the afternoon, lighter on fuel,
they flew even higher. Rapidly closing
behind the aircraft, with a lot of energy and
no idea of the U-2s speed, other than he
was relatively slow, I was climbing on full
power. As soon as I raised my nose, I got
the U-2 on my radar. On a couple of later
sorties, I lost the reheat, but it didn’t affect
the intercept. The Firestreak acquired on
each interception. My over-riding memory
is of eventually lifting my head up out of the
radar [screen], looking up and seeing the
U-2 with a very high closing speed. At close
to a supersonic overtake, the last bit of the
interception was extremely rapid! I lost a
little bit of speed, maybe down to Mach 1.6
to 1.5. Then I had to immediately return to
base because of a fuel shortage. There was
absolutely no possibility of re-attack.”
John flew 19 or 20 sorties against
the U-2s up to October 28, 1962 and
again briefly in November. He explained:
“They were very much ‘canned’ sorties
but demonstrated the U-2 was within the
capability of the Lightning, a quantum leap
in capability, something no other aircraft
then matched – American or Soviet. The
Lightning climbed well above 70,000ft but I
think the U-2 pilots, even then, still felt they
were invulnerable to manned aircraft. There
was never a malfunction of the aircraft
system. It behaved absolutely perfectly,
no suggestion of flick or yaw at all. The
interception always ended with a common
result. I was either short of fuel or very
short of fuel and still about 150 miles from
Middleton St George. That was ok in the
morning when there was no other air traffic.
Breaking off the interception close tohttp://www.aviation-news.co.uk 39John was the first pilot to fly 1,000 hours on the Lightning while with 111 Sqn at RAF Wattisham
in 1967. Hugh Trevor CollectionThe pilots who flew the nine-ship Lightning
formation at the 1965 Paris Air Show. Rear,
from left: Tony Doyle, Kiwi Perreaux, John
Mitchell, Hedley Molland and Pete Creigh.
Front: Dave Samuels, Bob Chisholm, George
Black, Chris Carr-White and Barney Bullocke.
via Lightning Pilots AssociationLightning F.2A, XN728/V, of 92 Sqn in a natural metal
finish taxiing out at Gütersloh. Hugh Trevor Collection36-40_lightning_cobraDC.mfDC.mfDC.indd 39 01/03/2018 19:17