John Hall obituary
In the late 1950s my friend and Guernsey neighbour John Hall, who has died aged 98, was part of an intrepid team of British test pilots. During the cold war they helped with the birth of the English Electric Lightning, the first – and last – entirely British-built supersonic jet fighter. For years the Lightning was the RAF’s main interceptor, with a phenomenal rate of climb. American fighter pilots envied its perform
Open original article- Ledger record
- #742
- First seen
- 19 Aug 2026, 16:16 UTC
- Last checked
- 20 Aug 2026, 08:47 UTC
- Version history
- 1 version
- Current fingerprint
bad167dc93a4...18ac5d
Publisher layer
Recorded article metadata
- Publisher
- The Guardian
- Country
- England / United Kingdom
- Source published
- 19 Aug 2026, 15:44 UTC
- Source updated
- No update timestamp supplied
- Byline
- Colin Smith
- Section
- Aeronautics
In the late 1950s my friend and Guernsey neighbour John Hall, who has died aged 98, was part of an intrepid team of British test pilots. During the cold war they helped with the birth of the English Electric Lightning, the first – and last – entirely British-built supersonic jet fighter. For years the Lightning was the RAF’s main interceptor, with a phenomenal rate of climb. American fighter pilots envied its perform
Change layer
Observed version timeline
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1
John Hall obituary
In the late 1950s my friend and Guernsey neighbour John Hall, who has died aged 98, was part of an intrepid team of British test pilots. During the cold war they helped with the birth of the English Electric Lightning, the first – and last – entirely British-built supersonic jet fighter. For years the Lightning was the RAF’s main interceptor, with a phenomenal rate of climb. American fighter pilots envied its perform
Changed fieldstitlebylinedescriptionTextcontentTextsourcePublishedAtsourceUpdatedAtsectionimageUrltags- Version SHA-256
bad167dc93a4...18ac5d- Capture SHA-256
32b3e8043e5b...1f520f
Interpretation layer
Labels with declared origins
Publisher categories are copied from source metadata. Machine signals report observable wording or format and do not determine truth, intent, ethics, or wrongdoing.
- machine content-type Reported news observable-rules-v1 / 70% rule confidence
- machine language-signal Death or self-harm observable-rules-v1 / 65% rule confidence
- publisher category Aeronautics rss-category
- publisher category Aerospace industry rss-category
- publisher category Air transport rss-category
- publisher category Military rss-category
- publisher category Royal Air Force rss-category
Public response layer
Reception snapshots
Comment counts and samples remain absent until a lawful, source-specific capture method is reviewed. Absence is recorded instead of estimated.
Evidence layer
Capture provenance
- Capture ID
- #133
- Observed
- 19 Aug 2026, 16:16 UTC
- HTTP result
- 200 / parsed
- Raw payload
- 466,107 bytes, private gzip evidence
- Collector
- news-ledger/0.1
- Public boundary
- metadata and excerpt