English Electric Lightning F.1 (XM135)

Photograph: English Electric Lightning F.1 (XM135) by Paul Cremin on 14 March 2004 at the Imperial War Museum Duxford, taken with a Sony DSC-V1 7mm, f2.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 100.

XM135 is an English Electric Lightning F.1 preserved at the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. It is seen here displayed in Royal Air Force No 74 'Tiger' Squadron colours.

XM135 was the very first full-production Mk.1 and first flew on 14 November 1959. XM135 then served with the Central Flying School at RAF Coltishall from May 1960. It then served with 74 Squadron and 226 Operational Conversion Unit, the Leuchars Target Facilities Flight, and was delivered to storage with 60 Maintenance Unit in June 1971, becoming the last F.1 to fly in the process.

During its flying career, XM135 became famous for being the aircraft in which an engineering officer had an extremely scary experience when on 22 July 1966 some ground running tests went badly wrong. XM135 was with 33 Maintenance Unit at RAF Lyneham being worked on to fix a persistent electrical fault that only showed up when XM135 was accelerating. Wing Commander Walter "Taff" Holden was undertaking taxiing tests to see if he could replicate the problem. The canopy was off, ground locks were in on the undercarriage and the ejector seat safety pins were in. Initial slow(ish!) speed taxi runs on RAF Lyneham's 'lazy' runway did not show up the fault, so Taff tried a further run but inadvertently advanced the throttles too far into the reheat position; now a Lightning does not give you much time to think in reheat, and before Taff could figure out that the throttles had not jammed but were just through the reheat gate, disaster loomed in the shape of a fuel bowser crossing the runway in front of him. Just missing this, he was then about to cross the main duty runway - as a Comet on its take-off run shot past! Having avoided disaster twice by pure luck, the end of the short lazy runway was coming up fast and he had no choice but to lift off, having had no luck trying to get the throttles back to idle - and having run out of time to do anything about it. Luckily Taff had some limited hours on lighter prop-driven trainer aircraft - Tiger Moths, Chipmunks, and Harvards - and this experience enabled him to calmly explore XM135's handling and make some attempts at landing. His first two attempts to line up on the runway did not go well but on his third attempt, he got it right - and only made the error of landing in the attitude a tailwheel aircraft would, with the result that he scraped the tail and in the process cut the brake chute's cable. When he deployed the chute, then, it simply dropped off immediately and he had to rely on the wheel brakes alone to stop him before the runway ended. This they did... with 100 yards to spare.

XM135 was disposed of to the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in 1974, being transported to the Duxford site where XM135 has been on display ever since. Many years after XM135's arrival, Taff visited Duxford where he was reunited with XM135 after his scary experience with the airframe several years before. Sadly, Taff passed away in December 2016.