5 ms·

The slowly fading art of flying and maintaining Cold War fighter jets

49 points by bootload 11y ago

Theodores 11y ago
Ultimately there is too much to oxidise or otherwise corrode, rubber parts, e.g. those tyres can't avoid oxygen even if they can avoid use. Maybe materials science can come to the rescue with fittings that do not perish, therefore enabling things like jets (cars and other things) to live on a bit longer, or to stretch their metal-fatigue lifetime out longer.
- elmin 11y ago
  You can keep anything running if you are willing to put in the work. You just fix what you can, replace what you can find, and manufacture what you can't. It becomes much more tricky doing it under the auspices of an FAA airworthiness certificate though.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    Most of these jets are registered as Experimental-Exhibition, which has (slightly) relaxed conformance rules vs other multi-engine turbine-powered aircraft. Single engine turbine (or multi-engine piston) operated under Part 91 (approximately "not-for-hire") was already reasonably relaxed about "owner produced parts".
- koja86 11y ago
  Maybe one day science can.
e2e8 11y ago
YouTube channel featuring many videos on older jet engines: https://www.youtube.com/user/AgentJayZ https://www.youtube.com/user/AgentJayZ
crdb 11y ago
Great article, great photos. No mention of airworthy Cold War jets is complete without Thunder City [1] which until a crash in 2009 flew the last English Electric Lightnings [2] in the world. The Lightning is a fascinating aircraft for two reasons: first, its design, optimised for intercepting Soviet bombers, was highly original and efficient at the job, beating many records, and it remains the only production fighter with vertically stacked jet engines; second, it was the very peak of British military aerospace engineering, the last time British engineers could say they were ahead or at least on par with what came out of America, and its success caused the Americans to put pressure on the British government to cancel the very promising TSR-2 [3] program, destroy the production equipment, the plans and most of the airframes, in order to favour the export market for the F-111 (which the British didn’t even end up buying) and in the longer term to effectively destroy their main competition. To give you an idea of the importance of the Lightning in the British aerospace community, I spent some time at Rolls-Royce in Derby back in the late 2000s, and the production manager managed to mention the Lightning and the techniques they derived from building the Avon engines that powered it in our first meeting, a half century later! Even Jeremy Clarkson has one in his garden [4]. The Lightning intercepted U-2s, flew as high as 88,000ft (27,000m), and in a NATO exercise in intercepting Concorde, was the only fighter to do so leaving F-15s, F-16s, F-14s, Mirages and F-104s behind. A fun anecdote involves airframe XM135 (which is still preserved at Duxford if you are in the area, as well as an incomplete TSR-2) [5] [6]. A persistent electrical fault that appeared only when accelerating meant that the people working on the jet had to accelerate it. Whilst taxiing, with the ejector seat on safe, no canopy, and wearing only noise guards (so no radio), Wing Commander “Taffy” Holden accidentally went airborne. He had a few hours in a Tiger Moth but nothing comparable to the Lightning (“I had never flown a jet aircraft, no”), so he had to figure out how to fly it, and since he couldn’t eject, how to land it, which he did eventually after three attempts, contacting Air Traffic Control via hand signals. On another note, the most performant Cold War aircrafts flying in the US today are probably the two FAA-approved brand new SU-37s from Pride Aircraft [7] which were sold by the Ukrainian Air Force with zero hours on either the engines or the airframes and completely Westernised with English language controls and modern electronics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_City [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo (Jeremy's jet fighter garden feature - Speed - BBC) “Do you stock Lightning jet fighters? Oh you do! Could you please leave one aside for me?” [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfeN3FoZYj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfeN3FoZYj0 (Wing Commander "Taffy" Holden ENGLISH ELECTRIC LIGHTNING Inadvertent Take Off Incident) [6] http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?20807-Lightning-XM135-inadvertant-flight-by-W-Cdr-Holden&p=970933#post970933 http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?20807-Lightnin... ("The flight in Taffy's own words") [7] http://www.prideaircraft.com/flanker.htm http://www.prideaircraft.com/flanker.htm

49 points by bootload 11y ago

Ultimately there is too much to oxidise or otherwise corrode, rubber parts, e.g. those tyres can't avoid oxygen even if they can avoid use. Maybe materials science can come to the rescue with fittings that do not perish, therefore enabling things like jets (cars and other things) to live on a bit longer, or to stretch their metal-fatigue lifetime out longer.

elmin 11y ago
You can keep anything running if you are willing to put in the work. You just fix what you can, replace what you can find, and manufacture what you can't. It becomes much more tricky doing it under the auspices of an FAA airworthiness certificate though.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  Most of these jets are registered as Experimental-Exhibition, which has (slightly) relaxed conformance rules vs other multi-engine turbine-powered aircraft. Single engine turbine (or multi-engine piston) operated under Part 91 (approximately "not-for-hire") was already reasonably relaxed about "owner produced parts".
koja86 11y ago
Maybe one day science can.

e2e8 11y ago

YouTube channel featuring many videos on older jet engines: https://www.youtube.com/user/AgentJayZ https://www.youtube.com/user/AgentJayZ

crdb 11y ago

Great article, great photos. No mention of airworthy Cold War jets is complete without Thunder City [1] which until a crash in 2009 flew the last English Electric Lightnings [2] in the world. The Lightning is a fascinating aircraft for two reasons: first, its design, optimised for intercepting Soviet bombers, was highly original and efficient at the job, beating many records, and it remains the only production fighter with vertically stacked jet engines; second, it was the very peak of British military aerospace engineering, the last time British engineers could say they were ahead or at least on par with what came out of America, and its success caused the Americans to put pressure on the British government to cancel the very promising TSR-2 [3] program, destroy the production equipment, the plans and most of the airframes, in order to favour the export market for the F-111 (which the British didn’t even end up buying) and in the longer term to effectively destroy their main competition. To give you an idea of the importance of the Lightning in the British aerospace community, I spent some time at Rolls-Royce in Derby back in the late 2000s, and the production manager managed to mention the Lightning and the techniques they derived from building the Avon engines that powered it in our first meeting, a half century later! Even Jeremy Clarkson has one in his garden [4]. The Lightning intercepted U-2s, flew as high as 88,000ft (27,000m), and in a NATO exercise in intercepting Concorde, was the only fighter to do so leaving F-15s, F-16s, F-14s, Mirages and F-104s behind. A fun anecdote involves airframe XM135 (which is still preserved at Duxford if you are in the area, as well as an incomplete TSR-2) [5] [6]. A persistent electrical fault that appeared only when accelerating meant that the people working on the jet had to accelerate it. Whilst taxiing, with the ejector seat on safe, no canopy, and wearing only noise guards (so no radio), Wing Commander “Taffy” Holden accidentally went airborne. He had a few hours in a Tiger Moth but nothing comparable to the Lightning (“I had never flown a jet aircraft, no”), so he had to figure out how to fly it, and since he couldn’t eject, how to land it, which he did eventually after three attempts, contacting Air Traffic Control via hand signals. On another note, the most performant Cold War aircrafts flying in the US today are probably the two FAA-approved brand new SU-37s from Pride Aircraft [7] which were sold by the Ukrainian Air Force with zero hours on either the engines or the airframes and completely Westernised with English language controls and modern electronics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_City [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo (Jeremy's jet fighter garden feature - Speed - BBC) “Do you stock Lightning jet fighters? Oh you do! Could you please leave one aside for me?” [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfeN3FoZYj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfeN3FoZYj0 (Wing Commander "Taffy" Holden ENGLISH ELECTRIC LIGHTNING Inadvertent Take Off Incident) [6] http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?20807-Lightning-XM135-inadvertant-flight-by-W-Cdr-Holden&p=970933#post970933 http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?20807-Lightnin... ("The flight in Taffy's own words") [7] http://www.prideaircraft.com/flanker.htm http://www.prideaircraft.com/flanker.htm