31/08/2026
Always a brilliantly funny story to hear 🤣 Big “oops” moment
On July 22, 1966, at RAF Lyneham in England, an electrical fault needed chasing on a Lightning F.1 fighter jet, the kind that only showed up under takeoff power. With no test pilot available, the unit's engineering officer, 39-year-old Walter "Taffy" Holden, volunteered to run the ground test himself.
Holden was not a pilot. His only flying experience was brief training on small propeller aircraft years earlier. He had never flown a jet of any kind. That was fine, because the test did not involve flying: run the engines up to high power on the runway, cut the throttle, brake, repeat. The jet was not prepared for flight either. The canopy was removed. The ejection seat was disarmed. The landing gear was pinned down. Holden wore no helmet and had no working radio.
On one run, he pushed the throttles too far and accidentally rocked them past the detent into full afterburner. He struggled to disengage it, and by the time he had, he was going too fast to stop in the runway that remained.
Ahead of him: a fuel truck crossing the runway, an aircraft taking off to his left, and a village beyond the airfield boundary. So he made the only choice available. He pulled back on the stick.
For the next 12 minutes, a man who was not a pilot flew one of the fastest interceptors in the world with the wind blasting through the open cockpit, working out the controls as he went. He flew a circuit and lined up to land. Too fast, abandoned it. A second approach, abandoned. On the third, he put the Lightning on the runway and got it stopped. The aircraft was damaged, but lightly enough to be repaired.
Then he climbed out and went back to being an engineer.
XM135 returned to service and is on display at the Imperial War Museum at Duxford today, with a plaque in the cockpit telling the story of that day.
