Today is the retirement of the Harrier from RAF/RN service. They are flying one last mission taking in seven bases associated with the jet.
In the back of a wardrobe in Gateshead I have an 1:72 scale Airfix FRS1 which I bought in ‘82 (I found that difficult to obtain at the time following a rush on such kits during and after the Falklands War) but what really brought home to me how special that jet is was a few years ago at the Sunderland Airshow when my wife and I watched one do something no other jet could do. Oh, there was a low pass by a B-52, an Su-26 did ballet in the sky and a Belgian F-16 pulled off some pretty impressive high-alpha manoeuvres and even whilst the Red Arrows put in a top performance the Harrier (GR7) did something none of those could do. It did nothing. It performed some tricks and then just stopped, pointed at the crowd and hung there in exactly the way several tons of duralumin and precisely vectored fury just ought not to. It bowed to the crowd amidst rapturous applause and then flew off.
It was the effect it had on my wife, specifically her jaw muscles, that made me, seasoned aviation fan that I am, re-appreciate the bird. Oh, the Harrier is long in the tooth and short on legs and ordinance but it is a wonderful thing and one of those machines that just has charisma. Of course it should have been superseded many years ago and of course it only had a starring role in the Falklands because of a short-sighted decision to get rid of the Royal Navy’s CATOBAR capability and of course it’s air-to-air victories in that campaign were as much to do with Argentinian tactical considerations and the all new AIM-9L all-aspect ‘winder and all that but looking at my wife’s face I saw wonder in a way that I had deadened in myself by reading books full of numbers and graphs and playing sims.
I had been planning on posting about this and analysing it in detail (Per Ardua ad Wheelie Bin!). Prosaically there are things I ought to be doing about Christmas and such but constraints of time are not the only reason I will not give my assessment on such matters now. I hope they can sell the Harriers to someone. Though the basic design is old the current RAF/RN jets are quite new. Perhaps India wants them? If so then a deal involving the Ark Royal would be fitting. The alternative I suppose is that they are decommissioned and sold as ornaments or “gate guardians” which would of course mean them sitting still but not in the same way my wife and I once saw one doing nothing.
I also heard on the news today that the hike in airport tax will also come along with fuel surcharges from BA and undoubtedly others. Long haul flights will be especially affected. We used to dream of the skies and soon that is again all we will be able to do about them due to deranged economics, epic mismanagement and misplaced technocratic though technophobic Green idealism (”how much in UN sin tax are we paying again?”) .
Two days from now it will be the 107th anniversary of the first ever controlled, powered flight. Orv and Will must be glad to be dead because all of this would have killed them.
Goodbye Harrier! You will be missed.
The end of an era for sure and the end of any kind of British designed and built fleet air arm if the crapolition gets its way.
It is a grim day - it will help tear the guts out of what is left of the British armed forces and it will NOT save money.
It will not save money because the government is still committed to wildly expensive air projects with “our E.U. partners”, aircraft that would be of no use in the Falklands (or elsewhere) even if they ever go into service.
There are no aircraft carriers capable of taking these (lone take off and long landing) aircraft, into battle in such areas.
We should have worked on updated versions of Harrier technology - but we have chosen not to.
No surprise that Peter Preston of the “Guardian” newspaper is pressing for “peace” with the (far left) government in Argentina and its far left allies (most noteably Brazil) - “peace” is, of course, code for dishonourable surrender and betrayal.
It is also no surprise that both the Argentinian government and the Brazilian government are working to destroy Israel (another cause dear to the hearts of the modern British and other left).
All of international politics is linked - we are in a globel struggle with the left, and the “Guardian” (and the government employee class who buy it) are part of the enemy within. They are traitors to Britain and to the West as a whole.
On the tax point:
Yes more Guardian stuff - this time fully supported by Mr windmill-on-my-house-that-is-not-connected-to-anything Cameron.
The poor (of whom I am one) will no longer be able to see other parts of the world - apart from on television. We are now priced out.
Of course Greenism is not the only reason for this tax increase - there is also the government’s greed for more of other people’s money.
Hence the VAT (sales tax) increase in January - which will, most likely, kill off the economy.
Stand by for even more empty shops - and even more unemployed people.
You mean them doing something like this Nick?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/8204103/Bowing-out-last-flight-of-the-Harrier-jump-jet.html
Nothing like seeing one in the flesh of course. My wife and I were driving down the M5 to Torquay a few years ago, and a Harrier rose straight up from behind a hedge and hovered in the air just like that, then shot off like a rocket! Blew my socks off, like an episode of Thunderbirds.
Ah but when we designed those magnificent planes we had a Thunderbirds imagination in this country. TSR2, Concorde, not any more alas. All gone forever.
As much as I long for the Harrier to remain in our armoury, the truth is the main enemy of tomorrow is not likely to be engaged in the skies above sunny England or anywhere else it can reach for that matter.
£100m could be better spent on high tech ground fighting equipment, unmanned probes, etc, and training special forces, which would be far more effective against the enemy.
I think it is correct to phase out aircraft carriers, the next big thing will be hypersonic jet engines, whereby you simply don’t need to have a expensive and vulnerable mobile air base if you can reach anywhere in the world in a few hours from home.
Incredibly, the Historic Flight of the Fleet Air Airm at Yeovilton has apparently no plans to obtain a Sea Harrier. (I asked the man in charge who flies the Swordfish.)
Probably difficult to keep it going, but still, it’s an unforgettable show - not just the sight of an aircraft playing helicopter but the noise too.
They should at least have a static display one (maybe they do, in the museum. Must do).
The graveyard behind the Historic Flight hangar has several wrecks that look like P1127 Kestrels. But so damaged by use for fire training they could be original Harriers.
Saw one at Booker airfield, sometime early 70s, and it did the same stunt. Noisy is right (I thought windows must have shattered miles around). Impressive, yes, but it was the Spitfire that made me go all maudlin (insofar as snotty boys can be said to go maudlin). I think Battle of Britain was maybe the first film I saw at the cinema. Not sure I’ve ever seen a film with a Harrier in it. Lots of Herculeses, the odd Vulcan (one of the Bond movies had one at the bottom of the sea). And endless boring non-British aircraft with unromantic names that I never really got into. A year or two after Booker, I’d decided girls were better looking than planes, and that was it, really.
“It was the effect it had on my wife, specifically her jaw muscles, that made me, seasoned aviation fan that I am, re-appreciate the bird. “
Stitch that, Relate.
“Not sure I’ve ever seen a movie with a Harrier in it.”
Have you not Endivio? I dont think this one is quite what you had in mind though…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrXkyGrouQ4
Remember, the USMC is still using ‘em.
India has them too, maybe Italy. Guess the GR.9s will go on the auction block and end up there, or in Argentina (after all, they were shown to work well over Las Malvinas, no reason to think they won’t work just as well there now).
OK…
Harrier types… India is the only potential customer. The USMC ain’t buying because I will stick money that the USMC will lose it’s fighters soon. F-35B is for the chop because one of the two customers (the RN) is out and it is difficult to justify the USMC having it’s own fighters. So, yeah the AV-8B (USMC Harrier is living on borrowed time). The Spaniards, Italians and Thais all operate Harriers of one form or another (basically similar to the AV-8B which is roughly equivalent in capability but not in actual equipment to the GR7/9) but none of these are actual fighters as such. They are all land-attack machines essentially. I think the Spanish Matador has a radar of sorts but none have a BVR combat capability. The only fighter Harriers are the Indian Navy Sea Harriers. Now the Sea Harrier is rather different aircraft from the norm. For a start it is primarily an A-A aircraft. The Indian FRS51 is similar to the old (Falklands era) FRS1. IN RN service it was replaced by the FA2 (scrapped a few years ago). The FRS1/51 is a good little dogfighter but the FA2 with it’s Blue Vixen* radar and slammers had true BVR fighter performance. But it isn’t just avionics. The Sea Harrier is remarkably aerodynamically different from the Harrier II (AV-8B/GR7/9 etc) and considerably faster though lacking in range/payload. Essentially the Harrier II was a major redesign by McDonnell Douglas (Now Boeing) to meet it’s biggest customer - the USMC - who wanted a bomb-truck to support the grunts hitting the beach. This caused some chagrin in the RAF/RN but that is now long ago and irrelevant. Anyway, the idea that the Harrier is British is not strictly speaking true and hasn’t been for quite many years.
The only hope for the surplus GR7/9s is if the Indians because the other countries I mentioned are all in political and/or economic turmoil. The only realistic role is if the Indian Navy buys Ark Royal and the jets as an amphibious assault carrier. If they then decide to use their new toys to patrol their pond and give some Somalian pirates a righteous kicking then I shall raise a glass of lassi to them. Well someone’s gotta do it.
*The Blue Vixen lives on. The CAPTOR radar on a Typhoon is derived from it. Why the flying fuck BAE/EADS et al thought they could busk an allegedly gen 4/5 fighter with an admittedly very good pulse doppler set rather than an AESA one beggars belief. Everything has AESA these days. I think my camera does.