English Electric Lightning

I want to say 20 Squadron.

I don't know if that's the correct number.

There were also Lightnings, 74 Squadron was there.

Their flight line was near us.

And also Javelins.

Yeah, it allowed these massive bombers to fly high and fast enough to deliver a nuclear payload before they could be intercepted.

Speaking of interceptors, I was looking at the English electric lightning on display, and honestly, it looks absolutely absurd.

It's definitely unique.

Instead of hanging engines on the wings like a normal jet, it looks like they shoved two massive jet engines on top of each other right inside the fuselage.

Well, look, uh, from my memory, it's always been the stereotype of the Saudi military that they're fantastically well-equipped, but not necessarily the most formidable Uh, martial power in the world, uh, despite having some of the, uh, finest military equipment in the world, and ultimately they've always had to recycle those dollars back somehow.

So if it's not buying, you know, uh, Lightning, the English Electric Lightnings and, um, Lockheed Martin Starfighters, then these days it's buying Eurofighter Typhoons, right, and, and integrated radar systems and all the rest of it, these fabulously expensive weapons.

M1 Abrams tanks is another one, you know.

Like, the most expensive, complicated tank, uh, on planet Earth, um, is something that they have, and they were very effective when they rolled across the causeway into Bahrain, um, to crush the uprising there, which was the only uprising the West did not support during the Arab Spring.

One of the Briggs and his mobile truck headquarters, and he says, I'm just talking to the RAF now, and they show that bit of stock footage of the jet flying out of the village.

I'm pretty sure that was an English Electric Lightning, which I've always thought is a bizarre name for a fighter plane.

But it turns out the company that made them was called English Electric.

Oh, yeah.

So it's actually called the lightning.

They call it an English electric lightning.

The cone at the front of the nose is slightly recessed into it, which is usually how you can tell it.

It was famous for being able to climb vertically, almost from the point of leaving the runway, almost like a racket handle, to close to the edge of the atmosphere if they wanted to.