Saturday 16 January 2016

B.A.C. (English Electric) Lightning F.52 (Mk.2) - Saudi users

Today we make a huge step forward... up to the late 50s and 60s! With this British supersonic fighter.

The English Electric Lightning is a British supersonic fighter of the cold war. It was designed and manufactured by the English Electric company first and by the British Aircraft Corporation (B.A.C.) later after the first company was absorbed by the second one. It was the only British fighter of those decades that could achieve mach 2 speed. In this variant (F.52) was only operated, in small numbers, by the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF).

The F.52 was a slightly modified version of the F.2 prepared to be exported to Saudi Arabia.

Given the urge of the Saudi government of improving the defenses of their airspace due to the Egyptian incursions which were supporting the Yemeni Republicans in the context of the North Yemen civil war (civil war, where the monarchicals were openly supported by the Saudis) back in 1965. They ordered a number of multi-role lightning F.53, lightning T.55 some BAC Strikemaster and some American Hawk surface-to-air missiles.
Because of the urgency of the situation, they close a new urgent deal codenamed "Magic Carpet" where the British government sold them four additionnal F.52 plus another one in order to replace a lost in an accident one. Just after their arrival, they were deployed in the Khamis Mushait airfield, close to the Saudi-Yemeni border and were piloted by mercenaries.

EDIT: We forgot to mention that, the registrations and the colours themselves should be considered speculative.


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