Another ridiculous aviation story is about Taffy Holden. He was a RAF engineer who was working on a Lightning fighter plane that was having some electrical issues. They didn't have a fighter pilot available to sit in the cockpit to do a rolling test on the ground so they used Taffy since he took a pilot's course while in training to become an aircraft engineer. On one test the throttle locked with the afterburners on which mean that Taffy was going down the runway towards a fuel truck and another plane that he barely missed before pulling into the air.
He's made it off the ground but now he's flying the fastest and most complicated plane at the time, and because there was only supposed to be a ground test Taffy had no helmet, no canopy, and no ejection seat. The only way for him to get out safely would be to land the plane.
Eyjafjallajökull The Icelandic volcanoe
2022-06-04 15:15:02 +0000 UTC