The Labour government of the time, rightly fearing that their tenure in office was short, insisted on all the tooling being destroyed in order that the project could never be resurrected by a successor government with more sense.

Moggy

Any proof of this? What would be the mileage in such a move, politically?

Tooling is often routinely discarded anyway as companies move between projects. Carrying non-essential excess which has to be maintained comes at a cost.

Along with various air show crowds, I can remember being totally gobsmacked by the Lightning in its performances and particularly the way it could just tilt on its tail and go almost vertical.

What my companion said to me that day merely confirmed my impression.

I’m well aware that it had many other limitations (not least fuel/range) but that didn’t stop it from being an impressive beast.

I can remember a Flight magazine discussion from the late ’60s comparing the relative merits of the Lightning and MiG21 which went on for some length… only to finish with some statement like ‘of course, it’s unlikely the two would ever meet in combat’. Too true – given where they were based at the time in the Cold War, they would both have been running on empty well before hitting Red Top range…