Teenage girl helps grandad restore Cold War fighter

Many 16-year-old girls spend their weekends hanging out with friends or scrolling through TikTok, but Grace spends hers covered in paint and grease, elbow-deep in a Cold War fighter jet.

In her spare time, Grace loves nothing better than joining her grandad Chris - a former RAF mechanic - at the former Binbrook station near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, where the pair are helping bring a piece of aviation history back to life.

The plane they are reviving is the Lightning XR724, a dual-engine interceptor designed to head off Soviet bombers and first flew in 1965.

Now, more than 60 years on from its maiden flight, Grace and Chris hope to get both of the aircraft's engines fully running by the end of the year.

Grace, from Grimsby, says: "Playing a part in the jet and anything it does is just quite magical."

She adds: "We're trying to get her back to how she used to look, how she used to run, back when she was operating."

She cancels plans and does "anything and everything" to help with the jet's restoration, including scraping paint off the wing and cleaning parts.

"There's a lot of 16-year-olds who won't have even touched a Lightning or seen one. Just to have that experience is really great."

Just a few weeks ago, Grace was sent down into the aircraft to work on one of the engines.

"You can't drop anything, otherwise it would go into the engine and it would ruin it," Grace says. "I was really scared to go in at first, but then I got in and it was fine.

"I really wanted to try it because, who, at 16-years-old, could say 'I've been inside of an intake in a Lightning?'"

Grace began visiting the historic aircraft with her grandad in 2021.

"I saw it run and it was quite cool... I started to get really interested in it," Grace says.

"It is nice just to get out and just do something with him... whenever I go to his, he's showing me videos of what it [wartime] was like.

"He's taught me a lot about it and that's made me quite interested in it."

Chris, who is chief engineer of the project, says: "It's nostalgic for me as I worked on it as a young airman from 18 to 23 and I'm now passing on some knowledge and some interest to my granddaughter."

He began working at RAF Binbrook at the age of 18 and found himself working on Lightnings within five years.

Having travelled all over the world working on aircraft, he passed by Binbrook in 2019 and saw a Lightning stood outside "looking a bit sorry for itself".

Chris got himself involved in the restoration and now helps run the project.

"Five years down the line the aircraft is looking really good," says the 64-year-old..

Lightning XR724 was used to perform the quick reaction alert (QRA) role during the Cold War, and it first flew on 10 February 1965.

"It was scrambled very quickly, any time of the day or night, and would intercept aircraft and escort them out of the airspace," Chris says.

The aircraft was retired in 1991.

The jet, which spent the majority of its service at RAF Binbrook, was fired up for the first time in 18 years in June 2025 after one of its engines was fixed.

Since then, there have been multiple public runs, including one recently attended by former motorcycle racer and presenter Guy Martin.

Grace says she is interested in joining the Royal Air Force (RAF) or BAE Systems, a multinational aerospace, arms and information security company.

She says her interest in aircraft and aerospace stems from working on the Lightning.

"I wasn't really familiar with it all until I first got brought down," she says.

"At first it was just a thing that I do with my granddad, but then I started doing it more."

Chris says he is proud that Grace is following in his footsteps.

The pair, alongside the rest of the team at the Lightning Association, are hoping to fix the aircraft's top engine by the end of this year.

"I know I wasn't there when it flew back into Binbrook and when the Lightning was actually operating," Grace says.

"But it wasn't too long ago that it wasn't this great - it was just old, really rusty. But to see it like this, it's great. It's a lot better."

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