Geez, how often do we have to say it? It was nearly 20 years before the F15, so by 1988 the airframes were absolutely clapped out (actually they were worn out many years earlier by the time the F15 was coming into service) but the RAF was short of aircraft and had to force it it to keep flying. In its latter years, bits had a tendency to fall off as the plane accelerated down the runway. The airframes were just too old to carry on.

The RAF issued the requirement in 1947, the first prototype flew in 1954 and it went into service with the RAF in 1960.

We hear much about the F22 being able to supercruise (be supersonic without reheat), well the Lightning was doing that back in 1957.

Sadly the Lightning was crippled from the start by the pro-Soviet-Union Labour Government in Britain, which destroyed British aircraft manufacturing, insisted that missiles were replacing aircraft and demanded that the Lightning should have a miniscule range (a problem which then dogged it all through its various marks), and actually went around behind English Electric's back to foreign governments telling them not to buy the Lightning! AFAIK only Saudi Arabia and Kuwait bought Lightnings. Some Labour MPs were so determined to kill the Lightning that when a test airframe broke during deliberate test-to-destruction, Labour MPs were running around Parliament gleefully shouting to each other that the Lightning had broken so it was a failure and should be scrapped. The poor Lightning (indeed poor Britain) never stood a chance against the onslaught of the wickedness of the deeply socialist/communist Labour Government.

The Lightning did not carry missiles on top of the wings, but it did carry extra fuel tanks there if required. I lived near a Lightning base and I never saw those tanks in use.

I loved the Lightning like no other plane, I have never seen anything to rival it in flight for excitement. With the increasing larger under-belly fuel tanks it looked like a pregnant pig on the ground, but once those wheel came off the ground it was awesome.

H