Sea Harrier vs USS George Washington | Jon Parker (Clip)

i want to thank our sponsor avia watchers who create timepieces to seek the honor of both the aircraft and the untold story of the airmen who have dedicated themselves both in and out of the cockpit to bring these incredible machines to life they give the customer a deeper look into the shape and form of an aircraft and tell some of the incredible stories behind aviation to help drought the brand the vision is to produce watches that are functional yet enjoyable to wear which also tell a story of both man and machine make sure you head to their website at ava.com to check out all our amazing timepieces thank you and enjoy [Music] did you ever fly against the f3s all the time yeah yeah well the f3 was a fantastic interceptor um you know people decry the f3 i was always a big respecter of the f3 and especially the pilots and navigators who flew it they were some of the best air defenders in the world and i always have my work cut out to be honest even in a sea harrier but we had the longer stick we had the amram and we could touch them before they could even see us sometimes because we're not a very big radar cross section despite having that big barn door of an intake so we could sneak up on people pretty well especially if we were below him um but once an f3 got his claws into you you were going to the merger you were never going to outrun an f3 that was simply not possible this is the fastest thing on two wings um so f3 was amazing it could accelerate really quickly and get away from us quickly as well so if we were slow around the corner you know you came around the corner and you'd expect to see an f3 in front of you and it's a dot but then you can just reach out and touch them with an amram and say okay you're a dot but you're dead dot but it was amazing aeroplane flown by great great people so what kind of flying would you be doing from the ship would there be an average death no no that's the whole point of chaos isn't it um you could find yourself going to kappa frasca range in the morning and then in the afternoon you'd be doing dact with some mirages off corsica and that was normal normal behavior everywhere you went in the carrier the ops officer would be on the phone to somebody to pick a fight with and and off we'd go yeah i mean my second flight in the sea harrier was well the first one was doing air combat just to burn off fuel so that i could do the deck cycle to land on the deck um it was led by bing bong uh lieutenant bing um fantastic guy really took me under his wing when i first got to invincible but that lasted about an hour and then i was fledged so the next day my boss came to me and said look uh rory mclean our captain has picked a fight with uss george washington he said are you looking at my pint and and now we're having that so uh what what we need to do is this morning we sent uh uh clinky and speedy over to uh to pay him a visit and they didn't notice so they're a bit riled up but they know where we are so we've gone to the gulf of surte and we're sitting off benghazi they're not going to come there or so we thought so we said what we'll do um we'll mount a four ship alert five which means you're sitting in the cockpit on the back of the deck he says but don't worry jp you won't go flying you and i will stand down but we'll launch three and four at the end of the alert period they'll go flying and then we'll be replaced by somebody who can go flying because you've only done one deck landing and now you're flying in a heavyweight fighter and it's really really hot so we don't want you doing that so i'm sitting on the deck i'm strapped in i've done all the right things because it's good to practice that it's my second go remember and so i'm sitting i'm listening on the tele brief and i can hear this raid building and it's from the george washington and the numbers are starting to clock up now and they're starting to get closer so you know the range is cutting down and the freddy's voices are getting a little bit more high pitched and then we hear star c harriers side number 122 126 124 127. now i'm going oh no no they want me to start what's that about so started the engine and everything's ready and it's all humming and then my boss taxes out onto the runway and then i'm being taxed now i've not even had a brief on what an op launch was and this is where you line up with your radar almost touching the tail of the aircraft ahead and then off he goes and then the flight deck officer touches the deck waves his little green flag oh that's me so off i go now i'm expecting the boss to do a left turn followed by a 180 to then come across the front of the boat and i join up in front of him no all he's doing now his nose pointing back to the fight which is behind us and he started the turn so i come off the front clean up everything and i join on the inside of the turn but he's at about 150 feet and i'm underneath him joining in the turn thinking oh this is advanced and we roll out and he sorts straight into the fight and i've got my radar on and you know i can understand what the sword was um even though you know from the picture i was building from the freddie was amazing um the freddy's fighter controller sorry and uh so i had a very good picture and when i came around the corner i could see dashes three and four getting off the front as well so they were joining behind us in exactly the same fashion that we had these are the best pilots you know these these guys do this this is my second go and so we roll out of the turn and he and my boss sorts across and we were simulating four am rams and we sought four by four side side and off we go we shoot out winchester and turn and now the fight's behind us and we've got rid of all of our missiles in about a minute we're going oh now what happens because i've got a land now yeah and i haven't got any hover figures oh no because i wasn't going flying so i'm airborne in an aircraft that's heavier than it was yesterday in hotter weather and i don't know what the hovering thing is so i think well i'll get to that that that's going to happen at some point yeah and so i decided that i'd just burn down to no fuel because it's not going to get better by knowing yeah knowing the figures isn't going to get better if you know i might as well just burn down to nothing and then land so that was my plan so that was typical of the navy it was oh come on you know dry your eyes wet pants get cracking i like that i do like that [Music] you

Channel: Aircrew Interview

Views: 107,381

Keywords: Sea harrie, Sea harrier FA2, Sea harrier Falklands war, Sea harrier documentary, Sea harrier display, Jon Parker sea harrier, Harrier pilot, Pilot interview, Aircrew interview, Uss george Washington, F-14 tomcat, F-14 vs, Aircraft carrier, Royal Navy

Id: _Iq3Fhq789M

Length: 7min 5sec (425 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021