Sqn Ldr Jim Wild

Lightning marks flown: F1a, F2a, F3, T4, T5, F6, T55

Lightning flying hours: 2,620 hours

Personal Lightning Story:

"My Lightning career didn’t start like most of my colleagues. I started in the RAF as a ground tradesman following my failure to pass aircrew selection. I joined up aged 18, trained as an instrument mechanic, then fitter and served 8 years, finishing as a Junior Technician. I finally passed aircrew selection in late 1965, commencing Officer and Aircrew training in 1966.

I was selected for posting to the Lightning Force during my flying training. In those days there were numerous pilot postings to be allocated to. There was a large V-Force, other bombers, Transport Sqns of many types, Maritime Sqns, Helicopters, other fighters, and a large number of instructors for the training programme. I was therefore delighted to be selected to fly Lightnings as I progressed through the training machine, starting my first flying tour on 11 Squadron at RAF Leuchars in 1970 as a single-seat fighter pilot, a boyhood dream, albeit at the ripe old age of 29.

I’ll describe some of my experiences flying ‘a pilot’s dream and an engineer’s nightmare’ as it was so often described. It would be wrong to assume that you’d ‘made it’ after posting to your first Squadron. This took many more months of hard work before you were declared as fully operational, developing skills learned at the OCU and acquiring more, i.e. air-to-air refuelling, missile firing, gun-firing and depending where you were based the chance of QRA scrambles to intercept Russian Bears and Badgers which were the mainstay of intercepts in those days.

After I had been on the Sqn about 6 months it was deployed to Malta for a very large exercise to cover naval operations. The RAF had declared it could cover naval operations, so this was designed to test/prove this. Many Squadrons took part comprising bombers, fighters, tankers, transports, and we were joined by naval air and surface assets. A mini fleet sailed from Malta towards Cyprus and our task was air defence as they proceeded.

The engineers know of the very hard work it took to complete the monthly hours task which seemed difficult to do regularly. My first missile firing went smoothly which was not always the case as on a couple of occasions the flare which the drone towed to cause the missile detonation prematurely failed and the drone was shot down instead. My first gun firing took place at Akrotiri in Cyprus. Gun harmonisation caused many problems which took a long time before credible scores could be attained by all.



Other training sorties were against the electronic countermeasures (ECM) that could be deployed against us. Canberras were used for this and could lead us into difficult situations when they used both ECM and voice measures, pretending to be our controllers and attempting to divert us away from our proper targets.

11 Sqn moved to Binbrook in March 1972 as part of the reorganisation of air defence assets. No 892 (RN) Sqn Phantoms took over our facilities at Leuchars and we joined No 5 Sqn at Binbrook where both Sqns remained until the Lightning was withdrawn from service in 1988.

I was selected to become an Instrument Rating Examiner (IRE) the next year and after nearly four years flying the Lightning completed my 1000 hrs on type. I was also posted to 92 Sqn at Gutersloh in Germany, a very different type of flying in the Lightning F2A, which was acclaimed as the best version by those of us who flew it. QRA in the UK could be exciting if there were exercises taking place which meant lots of scrambles, but the 10-minute alert state meant you could be fairly relaxed during the 24 hr shift. However, in Germany the alert state (called Battle Flight) was 5 minutes due to our close proximity to the then East German border. A lot of intercepts were finding civilian aircraft in the Buffer Zone, a stretch of land parallel to the border about 30 miles deep which was forbidden for general flying. The pilot(s) of such aircraft were generally alarmed to have a Lightning on their wingtip giving the NATO directions to go back to where they should be!

I flew 3.5 yrs at Gutersloh with some of the most exciting flying I had done. In those days the Cold War was at its height, and we constantly flew to our limits and mainly at low level which the Lightning was never designed for but performed very well.

After that tour I was posted to a staff tour at Bentley Priory, from where the Battle of Britain was directed. 2 yrs was more than enough of staff work and I applied to return to the Lightning and succeeded. After a refresher on LTF I was posted to 5 Sqn.

In common with most colleagues we had occasional mishaps, warnings and incidents flying the Lightning and my first alarming one was one day shortly after a pairs take off as a No 2 in Germany when my elevator control seemed to freeze. After moving the stick gently to and from it seemed to clear but kept recurring. I broke off from our planned sortie, declared an emergency and positioned for a long straight final to land. The sortie length was 15 mins but seemed very much longer. Another incident was after taxiing in dispersal the No 2 engine seized on shut down. It was in a T.4 and the other pilot, and I were glad it hadn’t happened 20 mins earlier. On another occasion whilst flying an air test the undercarriage took 50 seconds to fully lower (way more than treble the normal time) which seemed much much longer from where I sat. By far the most serious was a day in 1981 when on an air defence exercise at Binbrook I had a FIRE 1 warning which eventually after many other warnings finished up as FIRE 1 and 2 plus RHT 1 and 2 warnings. Obviously soon afterwards the controls froze so I made a Mayday call and ejected some 45 miles from Flamborough Head into the sea. Fortunately, it was July so there were no adverse conditions and after 40 mins the welcome noise of the rescue helicopter was heard, and I was recovered. I had no injuries which was due to being tightly strapped in and using the bottom handle to eject. Back in my early flying training my instructor on my first trip in the Jet Provost told me to use the bottom handle if ever the occasion arose. He reckoned that the advice back then (1967) that the top handle was the primary and the bottom handle the secondary one in an ejection situation was wrong and you could sustain worse injuries due to your back position, especially if you were tall. I had the pleasure of phoning him some 14 yrs later to thank him that I wasn’t seriously injured as some unfortunate colleagues had found themselves. I flew again a few days after my ejection and the Boss told me to go in a T5 in case I didn’t feel right. I was in the right-hand seat and after take-off as soon as the u/c retracted an OIL 1 warning appeared in front of me! ‘Not again’ was my first thought as it could have developed into something very serious, but I flew a long straight-in approach and although the warning remained nothing else occurred. So, life was never dull.

Before my ejection I had passed the 2000hr milestone of Lightning flying, another memorable event for me.

Many stories are told which ‘Stretch the imagination’ would be the best way of putting it. I had one when I managed on an air test to see how high the aircraft would go. On one occasion I reached 71000 ft. Other guys have done similar and greater heights but that was my highest. Of course, engineers and others would point out that a pressurisation failure at those altitudes could be fatal. Another event was on a training sortie when tasked to intercept a Victor SR2. The V-force aircraft could easily outturn us at height but sometimes if we had excess speed, we could engage them successfully. On this occasion I matched the turn of the Victor and on a coincidence as I flew past, I noted the large Squadron number painted on the fin. It was 543 Sqn, the PR Sqn and when I glanced in my cockpit my altimeter read: you guessed - 54300ft. Oh for a camera on both trips!

After my 5 Sqn tour, I was posted as an instructor on LTF which was a very satisfying job teaching new pilots to fly and experienced pilots converting back into executive positions. Ever since the early days of the Lightning the suspension (chop) rate was high. The most oft heard observation among students were that they could fly the aircraft or operate the radar but couldn’t manage to combine the two which would then lead to their redeployment onto a less demanding aircraft. I had an interesting flying experience in early 1984 when I was tasked to train 2 Royal Saudi Air Force pilots to become IRE’s. I spent a month at Tabuk air base in that country flying the T55, by far the best 2-seat Lightning produced. As an example, we had to fly 2 sorties to complete an Instrument Rating Test whereas one sortie was enough in the T55 which had the large ventral tank and no gun pack. Also, students would really benefit for the longer time airborne.

So eventually in late 1984 after 15 yrs flying this most wonderful fighter I was posted and a further 9 yrs later finally retired after 35 yrs service. Having dreamt of wanting to be a fighter pilot I finished my RAF flying with, among others, Hurricane, Spitfire, Hunter, Lightning and Tornado in my logbook so was well satisfied with my flying career."