Why didn't they go for any time-to-climb records with the BAC Lightning?

sferrin

sferrin

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You always hear about what a great climber it was suppose to be but it doesn't look like they ever tried to go after any records. Any ideas why?
 
I think the Lightning holds national time-to-altitude records in Britain and South Africa, off the top of my head, but I may be speaking under correction here...
 
The RAF were always sensitive about the Lightning's performance, other than vague statements like '2.5 minutes to operational altitude'. Perhaps they didn't want to advertise anything that could provide more insight.

I have a colleague who in his line of work tracked them doing practice interceptions against Concordes down the east cost of England; apparently those and the French Mirage IVs were very tough targets because of their supersonic endurance. The Lightnings would refuel and then climb up over 70,000 ft to try to use ballistics to help, but would often have to break-off without achieving a firing solution; they just didn't have the endurance.

Subsonic ceiling was around 50,000 and absolute ceiling in the high 80s.
 
A service ceiling of 77,000 feet was quoted officially in the 1970s, I believe. Otherwise details were classified - and it was also hard to compete with highly modified Russian aircraft.
 
LowObservable said:
A service ceiling of 77,000 feet was quoted officially in the 1970s, I believe. Otherwise details were classified - and it was also hard to compete with highly modified Russian aircraft.
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Except that the F-104, F-4, and F-15 all did. And if it really had a service ceiling of 77,000 feet they should have gone for the sustained altitude record.
 
A couple of RAF pilots seconded to RSAF as part of Magic Carpet took the Lightning F.Mk.53 up over 87,000 ft. Barely controllable up there and engines would flame-out easily but what a view!
 
Kiltonge said:
A couple of RAF pilots seconded to RSAF as part of Magic Carpet took the Lightning F.Mk.53 up over 87,000 ft. Barely controllable up there and engines would flame-out easily but what a view!
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Yep. There are others too. For example a Vigilante was zoomed to 91,000ft, an F-101 to the mid 70's (they were going for 100k but had a false engine fire warning so they backed off). The B-58 set a record that still stands today. It zoomed a 5000kg payload to 85,000 feet.
 

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