The Harrier Jump Jet: How Cold War Anxiety Inspired a Vertical Takeoff

this video is brought to you by policy genius if you have family members who depend on your income you need life insurance and that's where policy genius comes in more on them in a bit hello everybody welcome back to an episode of mega projects just before we get started i will say that this video is a bit of a precursor to a couple of other videos we've got coming out about the development of vtol vertical takeoff and landing jets over the past 60 years going from the first one the harrier to the current one the f-35 lightning and also a video on a soviet version of a v toll jet because well of course the soviets had to make one too and so of course we have to make a video about one you can expect those videos soon but i will say subject to change you know how i can be with schedules we set the scene on a cold dreary day in surrey england not hard to imagine a cold and dreary day in england is it a few miles away from a small unsuspecting village named dunsfold lies a secret flight testing facility with a jet sitting on the runway tarmac at first all seems normal the pilot is communicating with the tower after which a short message of clearance is granted final flight checks are carried out and the mission goes ahead it's a sight we've all invariably seen before in the likes of top gun and other such movies as the jets begin to spool up and the soundtrack begins to play at night that's just top gun you will probably expect to see a huge surge of forward momentum to push the jet skyward but even as the engine continues to get louder and louder nothing seems to be happening and then finally the jet moves but not forward as you might expect instead it begins to float just a few meters off the ground and remains suspended there for a minute or two until the engines begin to power down and the jet slowly descends back onto the tarmac the date is the 21st of october 1960 and what you just witnessed was the first test of a prototype jet that would revolutionize warfare a jet that would eventually become known to the world as the harrier i think that's the best introduction for mega projects that i've ever read i love it before we get into the rest of our story today there are a few things that we need to clear up first and foremost well what is veto well v-sol is an acronym and it comes in a few different forms you may have heard of s vitol or astol basically they're all effectively meaning the same thing vertical takeoff and landing or short takeoff and landing so thinking back to our scene in the introduction imagine a jet that is capable of simply taking off and landing vertically instead of horizontally you probably have seen this at some point and got a picture in your mind you're probably wondering well what's the point in making it a jet isn't that pretty much what a helicopter does and yes that is true however a helicopter can't carry anywhere near as much weight or travel anywhere near as far or as fast as a conventional jet i mean i've see i've been hiking like in the lake district when i was a kid which is like a national park in the uk they'd test jets there or something they used to be walking along and a jet would whizz past you like yeah helicopters they don't go that fast all those things do provide a significant advantage however building a jet like this eliminates one of the largest strategic weaknesses of any air force they're runways which in a situation such as oh i don't know two countries with opposing ideologies who are locked in a constant battle of threats and one up and ship that at any moment could explode into open combat or nuclear destruction just as a random example yes of course we're talking about the cold war again welcome to mega projects ladies and gentlemen to explain how that might be relevant it was the firm belief in the west that should a soviet invasion of west germany occur the first targets to be hit would be the airstrips that could facilitate the takeoff of any counter-attacking military aircraft including nuclear-armed bombers this was of course a time before icbms and because of this the top military brass felt that they needed a means of providing close air support counter-attacking soviet tank advances and accessing key locations in the soviet union within two or three hours this meant that they could carry out retaliatory nuclear strikes even after all runways had been destroyed as a measure of cutting costs they decided to simply create a vetoed jet that would be capable of carrying out all of these various requirements all of that being said you might now be wondering well couldn't have been a more peaceful way to sort out this issue anyway that's pretty much everything we need to cover in terms of context so let's just crack on with our story today's story begins with the nbmr3 an uninterestingly named document created by nato in the early 1960s it stood for nato basic military requirement 3 and there was me thinking that it couldn't get any more boring but it is an acronym within another boring acronym look at the americans they do acronyms right the patriot act i had no idea that was an acronym for ages however veiled behind all of that boringness was a request for a truly groundbreaking vehicle shortly after its release the nbmr document made its way across the desk of one ralph hooper a senior engineer at the aircraft manufacturer a hawker civilian england what he found in this document was a lucrative contract to produce a jet with the following requirements strike fighter capabilities fully capable of carrying and deploying a nuclear weapon capable of going supersonic a combat radius of 460 kilometers that's 250 nautical miles a dash speed of mach 1.5 and a cruise speed of mach .92 and and be capable of vertical takeoff and landing this is no joke of an aircraft that last requirement caught too bizarre because it just happened that he had already been developing a jet that was capable of vetol about three years prior in 1957 the bristol engine company had put out the first of a particular kind of engine called a vectored thrust engine later the engine would become known as the pegasus engine more on that a bit later now when mr hooper heard of the release of this engine he immediately set about designing a jet fuselage to go around it in effect beginning work on the first ever vetol jet he excitedly contacted the commission in charge of the boringly named contract proposing to enter the hawker sidley p1127 jet which we'll just call design one because it can't be bothered with any more boring names we've had enough of them in this video however mr hooper received a prompt reply from said commission stating that this particular jet was not capable of supersonic flight and so they could not award hawker simply the contract seeing the potential in the contract however the head of hawk assembly gave the go ahead for a second round of developments another jet called the b-1154 which if all went according to plan would be capable of supersonic flight we'll just call this design two with orca sidley's first design getting knocked back in the subsequent redesign it gave their competitors time to catch up with vtol designs of their own the engine that posed the largest threat was the french designed to sew mirage there was also another design built by the italians called the fiat g95 but it didn't make it into the competition at this stage some intensely boring and convoluted bureaucracy ensued which we'll just skip over for the sake of everybody's sanity including my own all you need to know is that the nbmr3 contract was cancelled and the british royal navy and the royal air force was put in charge of the development thereafter okay so this brings us around to about where our video began with the first successful tethered test flight of a harrier jet or as it was known back then the kestrel however this was merely a proof of concept there were still many engineering challenges to overcome some of which we'll cover shortly but let's skip ahead six years the harrier was approaching its final form in 1965 the british raf took delivery of six pre-production kestrels which would act as training models and a test for their suitability in the raf clearly the raf was impressed because within a year they'd put down an order for 60 aircraft it was also at this moment that the final design was to be named after the harrier hawk a very similar bird to a kestrel but larger so a fitting name okay we'll get back to the video in just a second but first a quick word from today's sponsor policy genius look nobody likes to think about life insurance but the reality is that it's an important layer of protection for many families especially for single income households whether you've been putting off your purchase or you just never really thought about it policy genius is the team you want to check in with this is a third party service that works for you not the insurance company so you can 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per hour putting it just below the sound barrier and it had a total development cost of around 180 to 200 million pounds in 1974 which is about 2.13 billion pounds a day about 2.9 billion dollars if you're familiar with some of the topics we cover here on mega projects those numbers may seem pretty tame even average compared to projects like the f-35 video coming out on that shortly or the b2 bomber but it wouldn't be a mega projects video without something being exceptional you remember those vector thrust engines that we mentioned earlier well they were capable of producing an ungodly amount of thrust even compared to the engines of today some 50 years later for reference the mcdonald douglas phantom jet which was developed around the same time as the harrier used the gej79 axial flow turbojet engine producing 53 kilonewtons of dry thrust that's about 11905 pound-feet for those who love freedom units compare that to a single pegasus engine which was capable of producing 106 kilonewtons or 23 800 pound-feet of thrust almost exactly double that of the thrust of the gej perhaps that might seem excessive but every bit of that thrust was completely necessary for their purpose that's because when a regular plane is taking off it needs a nice long flat runway to get itself up to speed and as you probably already know at a certain point enough air will be passing over the wings to generate a sufficient amount of lift for the plane to overcome the force of gravity the amount of thrust required from the engines in that scenario would only need to be enough to overcome the aircraft's inertia from stationery and the drag generated during takeoff and flight beer around the craft is the one carrying its weight but when you consider the harrier it's an entirely different story not only are you having to deal with the inertia and drag but also the entire weight of the aircraft the difference is like picking up and carrying a heavy boulder rather than just rolling it along the floor and it was for this reason that the engines had to be so massively powerful as you can imagine this was only the beginning of the obstacles that the engineers at hawker sidley had to overcome next was actually getting a jet to reliably carry out a vertical takeoff and you may even be wondering well how did they manage it or you may not be wondering that but i mean regardless we're going to tell you but to save a little time we're not going to go too deep into how these planes work these are just some of the basics to begin with a jet engine works by sucking air into an intake this is the forefront hole that you see on commercial jets you will also see many slanted blades within the engine these are just the first of several rows of spinning fans that compress the air entering the engine after this the compression stage the air enters a cavity within the engine now at a very high pressure the air is then channeled into a narrow pipe of smaller volume than the cavity which in accordance with bernoulli's principle will cause the velocity of the air to increase it is at this point that a mist of fuel is sprayed into the highly pressurized air where it combusts causing a powerful jet to be pushed out the back of the engine thereby producing thrust there are a few variations in this format but this is the basics of jet engine operation the pegasus engine worked on the principle that instead of putting all of the thrust through one exhaust it's split into four smaller exhausts you may have noticed that a harrier does not have the regular giant exhaust port that most jets have when it flies forward it just points the exhausts backwards and when it needs to take off in a vertical fashion these four jets rotate and point at the ground for those with an interest in physics among you this is a prime example of newton's third law for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction the jet pushes the air downwards so the air pushes the jet upwards now the more observant of you might have noticed a problem with this when a plane is in flight regular flight that is you can use regular control surfaces on the wings and tail to control the pitch and roll you know the flaps and the airplane wings that control the direction that the aircraft points the problem with that design is that when you adjust the angle of flaps on the wing you necessarily rely on air passing over that wing in order to change the direction that the plane is pointing but a jet that is just hovering doesn't have any air passing around it so it can't rely on this effect in fact ignoring the obvious differences from a mathematical perspective a jet that is hovering here on earth can be seen in a similar way to a spacecraft floating in space and similar to a spacecraft you can't rely on atmosphere to control the direction you were pointing so if you were to take off vertically you could do little more than move up down forwards or backwards think of it like driving a car with no steering wheel arguably a pretty serious problem when you're trying to avoid things like bullets and rockets or just destroying your plane by crashing it into the ground however once the engineers made this connection between a hovering jet and a spacecraft they could pull from experience gained on the apollo programs to reach a solution to the problem they ended up creating a pipeline direct from the compressor stage of the engine to some reaction control valves on the tail nose and tip of each wing so just like a spacecraft if it needed to roll it would fire a jet of air from the wings if it needed to point the nose up or down it would release the air from the nose or the tail and those are just some of the primary developments that made this jet a possibility it would take days to go into detail on every advancement that these jets made over the years now that's not to say that these jets weren't without their flaws though and even after decades of use and numerous redesigns one of the biggest failures of these jets was their instability during landing as you know when this jet is coming in for a short or vertical landing it will be pointing its jets at the ground probably imagine slowing down or holding a jet of this size in place using just air requires a tremendous volume of air needing to be moved around at very high speed and then as you get closer to the ground a problem begins to present itself a problem that more or less all of us have faced at some point on an aircraft turbulence now turbulence in a normal aircraft when you're thousands of meters off the ground is bad enough but turbulence when you're only a few meters from the ground and rapidly getting nearer is a different ballgame entirely it was an unfortunately common occurrence that the swell from the jets would cause an oscillation to occur which could rapidly worsen to the point that the aircraft would flip and smash into the ground this would happen too fast for the pilot to react and often it would be fatal to anyone in the aircraft advice on how to avoid this was simply to cut the engines a few meters above the ground and accept a rough landing as advancements in computing progress they were able to put a computer in charge of keeping the aircraft stable and the problem became less and less frequent but it never really fully went away now as i said just a few moments ago this is just the cliff notes version of the numerous mechanical happenings on board the harrier and that's without even going into the many updates and upgrades that the jet received over the years at the end of the development phase however the jet was ready to take to the skies and it has to be said that what those engineers had built was at the time just an immense achievement as we're about to see the harrier would become one of the most versatile aircraft in any modern military's arsenal finally after a long development period and as 1969 dawned the jet was finally ready to prove its worth on the modern day battlefield the harrier was ready for service and it was in april of 1969 that squadron number one became the first squadron in the world to be equipped with a harrier jet actually they received a few harrier jets and i'm pretty sure the naming of the squadron was just a coincidence but you have to give them props for the creativity and just quickly while we're on topic of names harrier jump jet is a super cool name i mean f35 b10 u2 i mean i know you americans love your letters and numbers but harriet jump chat that's just cool anyway squadron 1 became the first to receive and operate their jets and actually there is a relatively cool story here in may of 1969 one of squadron 1's harriers took part in the transatlantic air race going from london to new york it was a combined put in air race that started in the london post office tower from where the pilots had to race to some pancreas station get in their aircraft and then fly across the atlantic to the empire state building the harrier got the fastest time overall not because they had the fastest jet but because apparently the crew were able to just land within the city rather than going to the nearest airport which if true is incredibly cool now at this point the harrier was still pretty brand new so a lot of people would not have heard of it they would not have seen it so just imagine seeing a jet land like a helicopter in the middle of new york city it'd be extremely cool moving on in 1970 two more squadrons received their first harriers both in west germany within the raf the harrier's primary role was as a close air support machine and i suppose this is oddly surprising seeing as one of their initial design criteria was to hold a soviet tank advance thankfully they were never used for this and instead during 1982 after sitting around for about a decade the decision was made to enlist the raf harriers in the royal navy's attack during the falklands war after some upgrades that would allow them to operate better at sea they were sent over with the rest of the royal navy's fleet between the 2nd of april and the 14th of june 1982 the harris flew upwards of 2 000 successful sorties in total 10 harriers were lost to a combination of ground fire accidents or mechanical failure by this time the harrier had been fully accepted into pop culture as an icon of military engineering and it wouldn't be one of my videos if we didn't mention that pepsi ad but those who you don't know i've made like a minimum of three to five separate videos on this bloody pepsi advert over the years so here we go again in 1996 pepsi began a promotional campaign that allowed pepsi drinkers to collect points from every bottle of pepsi they drank and then trade in those points for pepsi branded prizes angus who wrote this script is just playing with me right you gotta be kidding on the accompanying ads if you've not seen any of my other videos just know that this this follows me around the internet the bloody pepsi ass on the accompanying ad campaign there was an offer of a harrier jet in exchange for something like 10 million points which would have taken drinking millions of bottles of pepsi to acquire long story short a guy found a floor in the system got 10 million points together after only spending a few thousand dollars and then sued pepsi when they told him that he wouldn't get a harrier jet surprise surprise spoiler alert pepsi one he never got a jet and he did get a lot of legal debt returning to the latter part of the harrier's career we find ourselves at the start of the 1990s as the new decade dawned we can see the onset of a conflict that will remain ongoing even to this day the first time troops set foot in the middle east it was the beginning of the gulf war in 1990. until then the u.s hadn't really put a fleet of harriers to much use having only recently cleared them for operation in the u.s marine corps as at the beginning of the conflict there was still an unproven technology and many personnel had their doubts but prove itself it did during the initial assault phase of operation desert storm the harriers were kept in reserve should they be needed however as the operation progressed they began to see more and more combat and by the end of the conflict in 1991 they had flown more than 3 350 sorties and amassed a total of 4 100 flight hours where the uk used their harriers primarily as a support vehicle the marines saw them as a far more versatile aircraft enlisting their use and carrying out bombing raids supply missions air support and a few examples of air-to-air combat against iraqi jets while the harrier was nowhere near as fast or as agile as the iraqi migs they were able to use their vector thrust engines to great effect a tactic known as dumping speed was a favorite of harrier pilots using the forward jets to slow themselves down very quickly causing a pursuing enemy craft to fly past them and allowing the harrier pilot to get behind with a clear shot after their victory in iraq the u.s mostly pulled out of the middle east however following the events of september the 11th the harrier was once again called into service and as the sun set on the arabian sea on the morning of the 20th of march 2003 two amphibious assault ships the uss bonhomme richard and the uss bataan could be seen bearing down on the coast of pakistan loaded with 60 harriers these ships would act as the command center for the u.s marine corps aerial assaults the objective being to use pakistan as an entrance point into afghanistan over the coming months more than 1 000 sorties would be flown by harrier jets onboard those ships and as the marines pushed inland towards the afghanistan border more and more missions were carried out amassing a further 2000 sorties even after many decades of service the harrier jet is still in use today almost exclusively with the us marines i think it's a testament to just how versatile and reliable these jets are the marines still using them today despite being a cold war aircraft despite the us being skeptical of them at first even despite production ceasing in 2003 they continued to be a highly valuable tool in today's battlefield and are still being used in locations such as syria across the pond the uk retired their fleet in 2010 selling them to the us in 2011 to be used to spare parts while the story of the harrier isn't all together over it is drawing to a close with the introduction of the f-35 lightning in 2015 the harrier has been pushed to the cusp of obsolescence only remaining relevant thanks to its rugged reliability however as with all things it must come to an end and this spectacular jet is no exception the exact date is unclear some sources indicate their final retirement date is 2025 while others suggest it has been pushed back to 2030. only time will tell all we know is that the next generation of beetle jets is upon us this jet was a product of its time not just technologically but politically as well the harrier was forged in an atmosphere of mistrust and fear with the intended purpose of keeping the western nations fully nuclear capable even in the event of a surprise attack from the ussr we joked that there was a more reasonable and peaceful alternative to this but at the time this was reasonable thinking which in essence was that even if we lose we're going to make sure that you can't win thankfully we're past that time and that kind of thinking we can learn from the mistakes of the past and be thankful for the world that we live in today so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe because this is the first in a series of be told jets so if you'd like to have more of them well make sure you're subscribed thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 526,165

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Id: 7ON9xGNfUOo

Length: 23min 3sec (1383 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021