 A single aircraft continued to be flown and remained in official service with the RAF as part of the "Vintage Pair" display team (along with a Gloster Meteor); however, this aircraft was lost as a result of a crash in 1986.The Admiralty had immediately taken great interest in the Vampire following a series of carrier-landing trials which had been conducted on the aircraft carrier using the modified third prototype of the Vampire in December 1945.At one point, the service had been allegedly considering the adoption of the type as the standard naval fighter to equip the Fleet Air Arm with; however, according to Mason, there had been a prevailing attitude that carrier operations lacked the flexibility to enable combat operations to be conducted with jet aircraft while at sea due to factors such as jet blast and the limited range of the early jets.