Now that’s an interesting plane! I had no idea that they had built such a fast plane , so long ago!
The Lightning was powered by two large Rolls Royce Avon afterburning turboject engines arranged one above the other in the fuselage. As a result of,the huge power of these engines, the Lightning was, for quite some time, the fastest climbing fighter aircraft in the world by quite a large margin.
I hope that you’ll forgive me if I introduce another large interceptor built in Canada in the late 1950’s: the AVRO Canada CF-105 Arrow.
Five Arrow Mk-I prototypes were built and flown in the mid-late 50s and many experts felt that it was one of the most advanced aircraft in the world. The Mk-I prototypes were not armed but the Mk-II aircraft would have received the a similar radar and missile suite as the very advanced Convair F106 Delta Dart which entered service a short time after the Arrow would have become operational.
The Arrow had the first operational fly-by-wire system (i.e.fully computerized) aerodynamic control system installed on an aircraft and the Mk-II would have been powered by two Orenda Canada Iroquois afterburning turboject engines which had a thrust/weight ratio of more than 5:1. The five Mk-I prototypes had a top speed of M1.8 and were powered by Pratt & Whitney J75s which were very powerful in the day but with the two Iroquois, the Mk-II airplane would have had a thrust/weight ratio of more than 1:1 giving it sparkling vertical performance similar to that of the English Electric Lightning.
Unfortunately, the <
incredibly stupid and irresponsible> government of the day ordered that the project be cancelled
and all prototypes and materials be destroyed in 1958. Instead, we got the Boeing Bomarc guided missile system which never really work and eventually, the RCAF received some used McDonnell F-101 Voodoo interceptors which were only capable of M1.3-1.4 or so and only for a few minutes at a time because they ran out of fuel that quickly.
However, the Iroquois flew on a test airplane crafted from a Boeing B47 Stratojet medium bomber (see the photo below - the Iroquois is mounted near the tail of the B47). The B47 was loaned to Orenda by the USAF for the project. The flight tests showed the Iroquois was a very reliable powerplant and fully confirmed the predicted performance of the engine. Apparently, the Iroquois could fly the B47 at nearly its top speed even when the six earlier generation J47 engines were entirely shut down.
If the Arrow Mk-II had been completed and made operational, it would have significantly boosted the air defence of North America at a time when the Soviets were continuously operating in a very threatening posture (not like today, of course, when they’re just a nation of quaint and slightly backward drunkards who are totally harmless and always behave in a very friendly and cooperative manner toward all of their neighbours....
).
Interestingly, after the Arrow was canned, a large number of the engineers who had worked on it and on the Iroquois project, were recruited by NASA and a number of US and UK aerospace companies. One of my closest friends went directly from Orenda in Toronto to Bristol Engines in the UK to work on the Bristol/RR Olympus 593 engine which powered the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner.
The Concorde, at one time, was estimated to have accumulated more supersonic flight time than all of the military fighters of all the airforces in the world
combined. This was as a result of the facts that most military aircraft can only fly supersonic for a few minutes at a time (due to the outrageous fuel consumption above M1.0 while the Concorde fleet operated at M2.0
for hours on end on a daily basis for more than 20 years. The only other aircraft that could boast that type of capability was the Lockheed SR71 reconnaissance aircraft operated by the USAF.
Cheers,
Pete