In the Cold War hangar at RAF Cosford. Sometime in the late 60's I was taken to an airshow at RAF Church Fenton, I was 5 or 6 years old. All I remember is an image like this. We were stood about 50m from the runway watching a Lightning approach for landing. Just a couple of metres from touchdown the pilot opened the throttle, stood the plane on its tail and dissapeared vertically. I believe that for decades it had the fastest climb rate of any vehicle except the Saturn V rocket. GL to 1 mile in around 10 seconds. The noise was tremendous. It's still one of the most exciting things I have ever seen.
Richard Nobel used a LIghtening jet engine in his Thrust land speed record car
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