When I seen Steve Daniels's, John Kunkel's, and Jim Day's comments about the 318th F-106B lightning strike on the "Trivial Pursuit" portion of the Home Page, I remembered using a photo of that damage in an article I worked on for the INTERCEPTOR magazine. After digging through my sparse collection of INTERCEPTOR magazines, the July 1976 article was found concerning F-106 Lightning Protection that Mr. Andy Plumer (the F-106 Lightning Device design engineer) wrote for HQ/ADCOM/LGMW's contribution to the "Bolts From The Blue" portion of the magazine.

I was fortunate enough to travel with Mr. Plumer on two different occasions. Once when he & I met at Griffiss AFB, NY, to proof the kit for TCTO IF-106-1130 on a 49th FIS F-106 and second when we met at Sacramento ALC and drove down to the 84th FIS at Castle AFB to check out a lightning modified bird that had been hit and to interview the pilot, Major Tom McGuire. Turned out that the mod worked just fine but the suppressor device had swollen up from the strike that Mr. Plumer estimated at around 500,000 amperes, more than twice the design limitation, but it did the job and was still functioning - even though it had to be replaced after examination. {As a side note, I met Major McGuire again about a year later when his F-106 took a lightning hit when landing at Peterson AFB and he ask me to come out to the bird to check it over. The bird was fine and the device again did its job.}

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While looking for the INTERCEPTOR article, I found a four page article about the F-106B NASA 816. It was published in the SCIENCE DIGEST magazine, February 1986 issue. The article was authored by Patrick Huyghe, a science writer in residence at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, and the article is titled "The Lightning Hunters".

Erv..... 25 Dec 00.