Dark Duke,
To amplify some of the answers/comments here:
Stacked layout: this was done to reduce frontal cross-section and therefore drag. The result was a a genuine Mach2 fighter with a staggering initial rate of climb (50000’/min) and the ability to maintain supersonic speed without reheat. The downside was that there was nowhere in the fuselage to put fuel.
Spool time: by now the Avon was a proven, reliable engine and, being axial flow spooled up very quickly. Certainly a lot quicker than the Spey in the F4 and the RB199 in Tornado and I have flown all three. I would therefore totally disagree with the posts re slow spool time and unreliability. I have over 2000 hrs on Avon powered fighters and in all that time never had a single engine failure.
On the Lightning the stagger did not always provide ‘consistency for airflow’. When taxiing, the No 2 engine (top) was kept at 65% to keep the electrics on line with the No 1 at idle. On take off you had to bring the No 1 up to match No 2 before selecting full power otherwise the No 2 would ‘steal’ all the intake air which would lead to a very slow spool up of no 1. It was quite common to see inexperienced pilots launching off down the runway with the top engine in reheat and the bottom still trying to accelerate to 100%
Weapons were never carried overwing although BAC (as they were then) did propose overwing SNEB pods:
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Only fuel was carried overwing and only by the F6. Although jettisonable they had to be empty first so there an emergency dump facility which blew the back flap of the tank off.
I hope that this helps.
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