Hero pilot landed jet in dark

A HEROIC RAF pilot has described how he managed to avoid disaster when all the controls on his Typhoon fighter jet went dark.

- Marco Giannangeli

Flight Lieutenant Ben Davey had to fly without instruments or radio communications through thick clouds for two tense hours before somehow touching down safely at the service’s Akrotiri base in Cyprus.

The 33-year-old had finished an intensive six-hour mission and was just about to embark on vital mid-air refuelling when things started to go spectacularly wrong in January.

He had been engaged in operations over Iraq and Syria, and just as he was about to couple with the behemoth RAF Voyager petrol tanker to refuel, all his digital dials including the vital heads-up display, stopped working.