Most 16-year-olds spend weekends with friends or on TikTok. Grace spends hers covered in paint and grease, helping restore a Cold War fighter jet in Lincolnshire.
In her spare time, Grace joins her grandad Chris, a former RAF mechanic, at the former Binbrook station near Market Rasen, where they are helping revive Lightning XR724. The dual-engine interceptor was designed to head off Soviet bombers and first flew in 1965.
Now, more than 60 years after 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, said: “Playing a part in the jet and anything it does is just quite magical.”
She added: “We’re trying to get her back to how she used to look, how she used to run, back when she was operating.”
Grace cancels plans and does “anything and everything” to help with the 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,” she said.
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 said.
“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 aircraft with her grandad in 2021.
“I saw it run and it was quite cool… I started to get really interested in it,” she said.
“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, chief engineer of the project, said: “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 18 and was working on Lightnings within five years. After travelling all over the world working on aircraft, he passed by Binbrook in 2019 and saw a Lightning outside “looking a bit sorry for itself”.
Chris got involved in the restoration and now helps run the project.
“Five years down the line the aircraft is looking really good,” the 64-year-old said.
Lightning XR724 was used in the quick reaction alert role during the Cold War and 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 said.
The aircraft was retired in 1991. It spent most of its service at RAF Binbrook and 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 said she is interested in joining the RAF or BAE Systems. She said her interest in aircraft and aerospace came from working on the Lightning.
“I wasn’t really familiar with it all until I first got brought down,” she said.
“At first it was just a thing that I do with my granddad, but then I started doing it more.”
Chris said he was proud that Grace was 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 said.
“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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