No. V (AC) Sqn move off with No. 50 Sqn for a training exercise over Malta. With the recent arrival of the new Lightning F6 aircraft earlier in the year, this is the first real exercise that the pilots are experiencing with No. 50 acting as target practice in their Vulcans.
Fg Off. James Burkley is one if these pilots. A new member to No. V and freshly out of training, was getting some true field experience out of the country. What he got however... Was not according to plan.
Tags and ratings are not final. I have a direction for the story but tags will be added and/or removed as and when.
Tell me of any SPaG errors etc in the comments and feel free to send suggestions for ways to improve my writing. Hope you all enjoy!
Chapters (6)
Sky high potential
Looks good so far. all the Pilot need's now is Tea.
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10820795
thank you both, given myself a slot of time to write out the next chapter tomorrow, depending on how that goes it should be out by Sunday at the latest but if all goes well sooner.
Nice chapter. i do hope they can get more fule for the Lightning.
10824999
We shall see...
Thanks for the comment. Really appreciate it.
Yes yes indubitably a great story indeed my friend.
Honestly, I really like this and it seems like you actually know what a pilot does and all that. That and James seems like he's acting like a mature guy.
and not panicking for no reason or anything else unoriginal and overused, hell he actually reacted kinda as to how I would if I was him at the end.
Great work dude, got plenty of potential
10839675
Thanks a bunch, working on the next chapter again tomorrow morning now that I'm back home. Part of that whole maturity thing too is more a reflection of my personality seeping in too but that only lasts so long.
Nice cover art. For some reason, the Lightning was sadly underated.
Dreadnought
10847044
Thank you kindly.
I agree it was underrated and that photo (as I have sourced) is actually taken of the squadron I'm using in this story. I do love the lightning for all its little quirks, it really is a beauty of an aircraft.
10847050
I like the vertically stacked turbojet engines. It allowed for two engines with a smaller frontal area than side-by-side. It was hell to replace the upper engine though, as you had to take out the lower one first. Maybe that's why it didn't get used on other combat aircraft.
Dreadnought
10847112
Not the first time us Brits made something massively over-complicated. Looking at you Hawker Typhoon with your Sabre-S engine. Yeah there were lots of reasons for it not being used in combat, the lack of actual war in the cold war during it's deployment period that the RAF could actually deploy to was part of it. The Lightning was an interceptor anyway, so it would be trying to take out bombers at high altitude as they approached mainland UK, we had Harriers and Sea Vixens during the time of the Lightning for actual fighting purposes. Maintanence was always a fucking task with that thing, as you said that top engine was a mess to deal with. By the end of it's life, America was developing the F15 and actually had it in service which is what really ended the Lightning's career, it was too outdated and had been that way for some time too.
Sad but still, it's something to write about with nice things I can bring into the story too.
10847749
Yeah, you've had some complicated projects. The Concorde comes to mind. But look at us. We've got the Gerald Ford class carrier. And we're buying ( and so are you) that crappy F-35.
10854708
Yep, we've really lost the plot at this point xD. There are better choices for naval aircraft than the F-35 such as the SAAB Sea Grippen being a viable choice. A sea variant of a truly beautiful airframe.
Hopefully the Tempest program will be successful.
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Well, for a bit more money, you could have had a catobar carrier with F-35C's. It's still the JSF, but it's more capable than the STOVL version. But I guess that the QE carriers were expensive enough.
Not sure about Tempest. I'll have to look it up.
Heh, while most look down on Alchemy (and Astrology), most forget that it was put the first step (took a left at ... , where was that again) ...
Goated story indubitably indeed
"However, there's also a downside ... "
Ponies use superior metric 💪
What next, miasma? Spontaneous germ generation?
awesome chapter keep it up can't wait for the next chapter
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I'll certainly try my best