As a far as pretty fighters it's hard to beat the Grumman F-11F Tiger or the Hawker Hunter.

The EE Lighting was indeed a piece of work. I had a CO who had attended the RAF Empire Test pilot School as an Exchange officer. He did his graduation thesis and flight test on the Lightning. On that flight, they towed the jet to the end of the runway, he started, launched from Boscombe Down and went over the channel and accelerated to something over Mach 2 and slowed to subsonic and returned to Boscombe Down and landed with a low-fuel light. Total flight time? 13 minutes. eek

As far as favorites, while flying the the TA-4J in flight school was indeed a treat and certainly one life's great experiences but it's not a fighter. When it came to heading feet dry onto bad guy country I loved having Tomcats aboard. You knew with 2 Phoenix, 2 Sparrows and 2 Winders that they could start shooting at 50 miles and work their way in to protect you. Here's a scanned picture one of my escorts as we came off the tanker during Desert Storm. Make me fell all warm and fuzzy inside to have these guys aboard.

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