August 2018 FLYPAST 57Missiles
The Firestreak air-air missile pack
beneath the cockpit was corroded
and had been holed by a forklift.
I obtained a replacement from
Marine Salvage at Portsmouth,
which was disposing of former
Saudi Lightnings at the time.
My luck continued as Kelvin
offered me one-and-a-half
inert Firestreaks. Further
enquiries got me another, almost
complete, example so that I could
make up a pair. They needed
dismantling and a fair bit of work
to be made presentable.
More difficult to find were the
launch rails to attach the
missiles to the pylons. Currently,I have one which is authentic,
while the other missile is attached
via a later Red Top rail. This does
the job perfectly well with only
minor modifications.
BDAC volunteer Dave Quigley,
an armourer by trade, was a
great help in freeing up the pylon
ejector units and getting the
missiles mounted correctly.He also made new mounting
lugs for the ejection seat gun,
as they had been sawn off,
and serviced the seat motor.
Meanwhile, Bill Saunders of
Tangmere did a great job rebuilding
the seat from a mish-mash of newly
acquired and original, but often
corroded, items.Split personality
Lightning XN726 served initially
as an unmodified F.2 with the Air
Fighting Development Squadron
(AFDS) during 1963 and 1964 at
Binbrook, Lincolnshire. Following
a period of storage she underwent
a major rework to approximately
F.6 standard at British AircraftCorporation, Warton, Lancashire,
becoming an F.2A.
Work completed, she was
delivered to 19 Squadron at
Gütersloh in 1968. Ironically,
XN726 sustained major damage
from a bolt of lightning to the
ventral tank in 1972 and was
roaded to Warton for repair.
She was assigned to 92
Squadron and returned to
Germany in 1974. Adopting a dark
green finish, XN726 served until
the end of March 1977 when the
F.2As were withdrawn from use.
I made contact with former pilot
Flt Lt (later Sqn Ldr) James G Wild,
whose name is on the cockpit side.
Jim has been extremely supportive
of XN726’s restoration and has
donated a control column, a pitot
tube and an aircrew manual. He’s
also driven down from his home in
East Anglia to Old Sarum on several
occasions and even got his hands
dirty (unusual for a pilot!) rubbing
down the missiles’ paintwork.XN726 and XN725?
A curious feature found on the rearmost fuselage frame, the transport joint,
was the hand-painted serial ‘XN725’. Also, when removing steel retaining strips
to replace the broken starboard quarterlight, ‘XN725 STBD’ appeared, written
in pencil. The cockpit construction number (on a plate in the nosewheel bay) is
95097, which is also appropriate for XN725.
Lightning XN725 never fl ew as a pure F.2, being modifi ed as a trial installation
aircraft for the F.3 variant. Its maiden fl ight was six months after XN726’s.
My cockpit section defi nitely served as XN726, as I have the rear fuselage
serial to prove it, and other panels carry that serial. The most likely
explanation for this oddity is that the cockpits were swapped on the
production line at Samlesbury, Lancashire, for reasons unknown, but these
puzzles help to keep life interesting.
XN726 is marked as XN725 on the rear transport joint.
Painting the starboard nose
roundel and 19 Squadron bars.
The remains of the ‘Fly
Marrows’ zap, the
original orange
DayGlo sheet
having weathered
to white, and
the re-created
version.
The base of a new stand is wheeled in below
the cockpit. HERBIE FATHERLY