Silvaire wrote:
for the pilot to pump the canopy up in the absence of external power
That reminds me of my days as a mechanic in the air force. The F-16 A fires up autonomously. The way it works is a precharged hydraulic accumulator starting the APU, which then starts the main engine. Sometimes though, for various reason, the accumulator has lost it’s charge. It then needs to be pumped up manually. Some 100 something strokes with a large lever, real heavy work out. And it’s not done by the pilot 
Maybe that’s the situation with the F/A-18 too, and pumping up the accumulator the function of the lever. My memory could be faulty about it raising the canopy to enable startup.
BTW, the guy who explained this to me (doubtless correctly) was there on his bicycle too, with me talking to the attractive woman Naval officer who was flying the plane. She asked him if he’d flown one, and his answer was “yes, I have a little time in them”, and nothing further. He was commander of a squadron of them in actuality, now a recently retired airline captain, and also an inveterate Luscombe restorer and homebuilder.
Not sure if that is the only production facility, but the Eurofighter was / is built by BAe in Barton, UK. I was lucky enough once to fly their sim there. Cool does not begin to describe it…
As far as I know, every country that bought the Eurofighter got an assembly line. Ours is/was at Manching (ETSI).
The companies build their nation’s assigned parts, ship them around, and get the other’s parts delivered to them, so every nation assembles their jets themselves.
