I believe the M2 series were the cheapest research craft that NASA ever built.

XM169-192
XM213-216
construction no’s 95056-70 and 95082-95095

Rust didn’t ‘evade’ anything and was tracked and followed almost the entire time by various units. He was let through because the Soviets didn’t want to shoot him down in the wake of other airliner shootdowns (would you really prefer he had been blasted out of the sky by an S-125, or would you be busy using that as conversational ammo now?) and because of incompetent leadership and insufficient communications, both of which were addressed afterwards.

What am I supposed to make of this?

£1000 to have the engines…..

Typical MOD cost bizarreness…..

If you think about it, with the cost of sending a crew from Binners to Elvington to demil and remove both donks etc., in hard costs you would think the cost to the new owner would have been a £1000 reduction for NOT to remove the engines etc…….:rolleyes:

The RAF didn’t need the donks anymore for the Lightning fleet, (unless they can be used in the PR.9) so pressumeably it would have been just for BAe’s stock for the Warton flyers….??

More likely the MOD sold them to RR who then converted them for gas pumping. I would imagine that the 1000 was the difference between removing them and what they would get from RR.

The British were considered to lack in air-to-air until the F-4 got a primarily air-to-air tasking.

Not true Seahawk.

Even as a Phantom strike squadron No.14 prided itself on its air-to-air prowess, and on developing BVR tactics using Sparrow. And that’s just one example.

All RAFG squadrons practised some form of air combat/evasion, even “Shiney Two” with Jags.

Not the best of weather. It’s looking good though, nice to see it coming togther.

Link?

Mainly because there was a training deficit in the RAF. A small, simple machine like the Lightning was easy to master compared to a Phantom. But not many British pilots knew how to fly the F-4 to its extreme limits. RAF Phantoms were usually thrashed by every short-range jet fighter pitted against them, not just the Lightning.

I’m sorry I can’t agree with this at all. Whilst the Lightning was a fairly easy plane to fly, it was not easy to use in it’s intended task. The Toom had the advantage of a far superior avionics and weapons fit and it also had two heads instead of one. If the Toom was more difficult to fly then the cream of the pilots would have been flying them instead of Lightnings.