Meet The Man With A Lightning Fighter Jet In His Garden

Take a drive through the quiet villages around the site of the former RAF Binbrook in Lincolnshire, and there’s a chance you might come across an English Electric Lightning.

Poking through the trees in the garden of an old farmhouse is Charles Ross’ fighter jet.

He would be the first to admit that it is not your average lawn ornament but, he says “it’s better than a bunch of garden gnomes, isn’t it!”

And it’s hard to disagree.

Charles is the chairman and secretary of The Lightning Association, formed in 1988 the year after the aircraft’s retirement from RAF service.

Why the obsession? It all started when Charles was in his garden watching a Lightning fly from the nearby RAF station. "I thought idly," he says, "it’d be nice to have some memento of these aeroplanes when they stop flying."

"It’s one of these things that either gets you in the heart or it doesn’t and you do what the heart tells you to do," he says.

"We here are all fairly passionate about this aeroplane and so this is what we do.

"Other people will no doubt preserve other parts of British heritage, this is ours."

The group are dedicated to preserving the heritage of the Lightning and even own one that is capable of engine runs, known as XR724.

XR724 is owned by a group of shareholders and the project to keep it running necessitates the group owning a variety of equipment and spares, including three engines with documented air-life left on them.

The story of how the group came to own the Lightning is slightly more complex though.

XR724 was being safely stored at RAF Shawbury before coming up for purchase on a MoD tender.

One of the group’s members put in a bid that he assumed would not be successful… but it was.

He then had 28 days to get the aircraft off MoD land or he would be charged enormous penalties.

The Lightning Association agreed to repurchase the Lightning from its member by means of a share scheme and have been looking after it ever since.