Smokestack Lightning

We’re having a mini holiday this week. After spending last night in Chester (with a quick trip to the cinema thrown in for good measure) we set off this morning to go to the RAF Museum at Cosford. Arrived in good time and enjoyed a lovely cooked breakfast to set us up for the day.
I have been to the museum once before when I was doing training there, and had a quick look round between sessions. Mrs C has never been there, so it was nice to be able to wander around at leisure, looking at all the exhibits. The “Cold War” hall was a stark reminder that the threat from Russia is not a modern phenomenon. Pictured is an English Electric Lightning, one of the fastest fighters in the world at the start of the 1960s. It was designed to intercept any Soviet bombers that might be headed in our direction and it’s party piece was that it could climb almost vertically to altitude, thanks to its pair of powerful engines. I was actually able to witness this at an air show I went to with my dad in the sixties - a very impressive sight, and it’s a shame there are no flying examples in the U.K. any more.
Behind it is a Thor ballistic missile. This was an intermediate range weapon designed to deliver a thermonuclear warhead from the U.K. to Russia in under thirty minutes.
Thankfully, neither of these weapons was ever used in anger and I hope their modern day equivalents continue to provide a deterrent, in spite of Putin’s sabre rattling rhetoric every time the West provides more aid to Ukraine.
We are now relaxing in our hotel in Milton Keynes. Not the most glamorous of locations, but it’s handily placed for all the places we want to visit over the next few days.