17 Jan 2026 12 min read

P1B January Newsletter

“Last of the Lightnings” December 16th 1992

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[Above] Final fight for the Warton Trials fleet led by Keith “Supersonic” Hartley photographed from a Hawk flown by ex Lightning Jockey Ian McDonald -Webb. The location - The Irish sea location of much of the early Lightning trials flights.

This month is going to be better than a rather delicious Fortnum & Mason ham sandwich, wrapped in thin paper freshly torn from the centre of a Harrods lingerie catalogue.

So much has happened in such a short space of time that it’s going to be hard not to burst at the seams with excitement!

As readers will know and as paid subscribers will know in rather more depth (hint hint) the focus of this entire project is the restoration of P1B XA847. It’s been covered before, but the historical significance of this one aircraft cannot be underestimated. No other jet fighter prototype exists that has been so closely linked with modern British military aviation.

This isn’t just a spotlight on the P1B itself - it’s also about shining a light on all the men and women who were instrumental in pushing boundaries, breaking the sound barrier not once, but twice.

Flying at ten miles a minute is groundbreaking. You can get from London to Manchester in 20 minutes. At Mach 2, it takes ten minutes - yes, ten minutes. And now, in 2026, it’s about a nine-hour car journey.

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Top Left - From the camera of the legendary Charles E Brown - “Bee” Beamont gets close to the Camera ship in XL628 - The subject of this months accident story. Below - A good illustration of the twin seat and single seat Lightnings. Controversially English Electric went for the side by side approach to the trainer. Whilst this might allow you to rub knees with your instructor - It gives much bigger problems in terms of parralax and it makes it hard when flying right handed circuits from the left seat. The twin was incredibly only 13 inches wider than the single seat! One of the other downsides is the ejection issue - Having someone eject next to you - literally - is not to be taken lightly. On the plus side the twin had identical fuel quantity to the single seat and handled almost identically. Top Right - Twin and single - all decked out for the annual Farnborough airshow late 1950s’s. Bottom Right - Spitfire Mk19 Powered By a Rolls Royce Griffon Engine and Lightning FMK2A powered by two Rolls Royces Avon engines. The Spitfire (illustrated ) first flew in 1945 and the Lighting just twenty years later - The Lightning is from 92 ( East India ) Squadron known as “ The Cobras “ They were equipped with Spitfires in WW2.

Living on the Edge

As we delve deeper into the history of XA847, we are slowly piecing together what it must have been like to live on the edge - quite literally the edge of space - in the late 1950s.

It’s hard to cast our minds back to an era when there was no internet, no mobile phones, not even colour television. No computers, no low-cost travel, and worse still, no chocolate digestives - chocolate was still rationed post-war.

This was truly the era of The Right Stuff. Test pilots were the celebrities of the day. As if their day job wasn’t dangerous enough, they were courted by famous cigarette brands to push their wares.

Yes, why not fly at 700 miles per hour at 100 feet above the sea, then relax with a nice packet of full-strength Woodbines?

What could possibly be better?

Pairs Take off at Farnborough with the ill fated TMK4 XL628 leading.

From here, the story deepens - into the pilots who pushed the Lightning beyond its limits, the accidents that shaped its future, and the very real challenges of restoring P1B XA847 today.

This next part of the story is for subscribers...

Paid members get full access to the deep history of XA847, first-hand pilot accounts, restoration progress updates, and material we don’t publish publicly.

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Living on the Edge

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