EE Lightning with a bit of good luck?

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tomo pauk

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The fighter is still of the same basic layout, ie. two engines one atop of the other. My intention is that it is turned into the 'British Phantom' - a multi-role all-weather fighter-bomber, or at least a bomb truck if possible. Development still being done in 1970s, with other countries chipping in where plausible. An EE take on the F-16XL theme also works for me.
Comments?
 
The RAF got a lot of use out of the Lightning as it was developed as a high-speed short ranged interceptor.
It stayed in service much longer than intended because it had some advantages over its F4 replacement and funds were scarce.
The Saudi and Kuwaiti Lightnings were a lucky bonus as an offset by the US when the UK bought its planes after the mid 60s cancellations.
Not sure there was much else the RAF could have used Lightnings for. The F4, Buccaneer, Harrier and Jaguar had the other roles covered after TSR2 and P1154 die.
 
A 2-seater all-weather fighter, that uses radar-guided missiles for starters - if we're paying for a 2-engined fighter, then it rather be as good fighter as possible. We can't count on Soviets being that nice to send their bombers to nuke UK only during the fair weather.
 
Nothing to do with luck.

The P.1 / Lightning was a tube which you could attach different sweep wings to and make it go fast for a short period of time. This is fine as a research aircraft but not for anything else.

Works about ok as a day-only guns/IR only interceptor with GCI but can't get to all-weather independent SARH AAMs, at range.


I think I'd go for de Havilland / Fairey mashup in the mid/late 50s
de Havilland 116 Super Venom: higher speed experience for dH quicker and a usable product
Fairey Delta 2: supersonic flight experience
Fireflash/Firestreak AAM experience
Mid 50s and the companies tie up more and offer some combined designs to F.155
Big - sort of like Fairey Delta 3 but with more systems from dH
Smaller/Lower risk - scaled down to Twin RB.106/122

1957 review bins F.155 as historical but then select dH/Fairey small instead of P.1/Lightning. Further scale back to twin Avon's and Firestreak only initially.

Mk2 swaps Avons for Speys and adds in SARH AAM...

Need to prune dH's workload on dead end projects in particular
 
[QUOTE="tomo pauk, post: 501701, member: 7354"
Why not, provided the SARH missiles are available (Sparrow, Skyflash)?
[/QUOTE]

Need a radar that can detect the targets at a reasonable distance and then illuminate them. Which is too big for the Lightning.
 
Phantom style inboard pylons protruding forward of the wing, each able to carry a pair of Sidewinders, possibly a TER or a single 500, 750, or 1000lb bomb.

Potentially 4 gun nose, plus another pair in the belly, 6 ADEN!

Alternatively, avionics dramatically improved to match the integrated performance of the F-102/106 or Draken, making the best out of the small volume available for radar and making use of the associated Falcon missiles.
 
red admiral said:
Need a radar that can detect the targets at a reasonable distance and then illuminate them. Which is too big for the Lightning.
Click to expand...

The AI.23 was not less capable than what Mirage III or F-8 had in the nose, those two were operating SARH missiles.
 
We've dredged up the SARH missile/radar combination conundrums a zillion times already on these AU threads and pretty sure we've had a dozen what-if Lightnings.
Technically the T.3 and T.5 were fully armed and not much inferior in performance to the single-seaters. With a decent radar you might make a better interceptor but there are two snags:
1) nowhere to really hang more than two AAMs, especially since the belly pack is best used for fuel
2) a bigger radar won't fit in the nosecone unless you reconfigure the nose intake or go for something like the hideous naval interceptor studies with lower side intakes in the nose.
 
tomo pauk said:
We can't count on Soviets being that nice to send their bombers to nuke UK only during the fair weather.
Click to expand...
The major problem was, that by the time of Lighting being introduced into service (1960), it was painfully obvious that any bomber raid on Great Britain would only follow the rain of ballistic missiles. And simple calculations showed, that as little as a dozen of megaton-scale blasts would devastate Britain with massive fallout.
 
Dilandu said:
The major problem was, that by the time of Lighting being introduced into service (1960), it was painfully obvious that any bomber raid on Great Britain would only follow the rain of ballistic missiles. And simple calculations showed, that as little as a dozen of megaton-scale blasts would devastate Britain with massive fallout.
Click to expand...

UK/RAF bought F-4 fighters nevertheless, introducing them in 1968.
 
Hood said:
We've dredged up the SARH missile/radar combination conundrums a zillion times already on these AU threads and pretty sure we've had a dozen what-if Lightnings.
Technically the T.3 and T.5 were fully armed and not much inferior in performance to the single-seaters. With a decent radar you might make a better interceptor but there are two snags:
1) nowhere to really hang more than two AAMs, especially since the belly pack is best used for fuel
2) a bigger radar won't fit in the nosecone unless you reconfigure the nose intake or go for something like the hideous naval interceptor studies with lower side intakes in the nose.
Click to expand...
Phantom style inboard pylons protruding forward of the wing, each able to carry a pair of Sidewinders, possibly a BVR
 

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