The Rise & Fall of the Harrier Jump Jet

in December 2010 the British royal Air Force and Royal Navy announced that they would retire their entire fleet of Harrier jump Jets from operational flights before 2011 in what had been a two-month rush job to meet the demands of government Cuts due to the aftermath of a financial crash of 2008 this marked the end for an aviation icon the last British designed and built fighter aircraft in favor of a far more modern and capable successor the Lockheed Martin f35b lightning 2 even though it would be years away from taking the place of a Harrier on the still unfinished British aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales but it was a miracle that the harri had had gotten this far in its lifetime there had been several attempts both in England and in the US where it was built under license by McDonald Douglas to kill the project off but these efforts failed because it was the only operational military aircraft in the world that could combine the vertical takeoff and landing of a helicopter with the flight capabilities of a traditional fighter and that could take off a land from a small clearing in a forest or a car park or even a helicopter landing pad on a ship but if this was such a good idea why didn't anybody else make any similar Vall or vertical short takeoff and Landing aircraft the reason for creating a vertical takeoff and Landing aircraft stems back to after the second World War War during the second world war fighter and bomber bases were one of the first military assets to be attacked if you could knock out their planes on the ground or their ability to get them in the air then you could seriously affect their ability to defend themselves or go on the attack the German Blitz C used the combined air and ground attacks with devastating efficiency after the war it was thought if you could have an aircraft that could take off vertically or from very short unmade runways or roads even if the main air bases were destroyed these aircraft would still be operational elsewhere and could be deployed close to the front for shorter turnaround times between attacks so there was a flurry of activity from companies and governments around the world to come up with aircraft that were capable of Vall after several years of trial and error from different countries and companies around the world one aircraft emerged that managed to combine the much sought after vertical takeoff and Landing with the flight operations of a traditional fighter and this will become the horker Sidle Harrier jump jet although it would take 12 years to go from conception to delivery but it wasn't the British who originally came with the idea of a vector thrust that the Harrier used that was Michelle weebo a French aircraft designer that had become interested in vertical takeoff and Landing aircraft from gyrocopters to helicopters to interceptors and even large transport planes in 1954 one of his projects was to create a vertical takeoff and Landing attack gyrocopter using the most powerful turboshaft engine at the time the Bristol Orion this would drive four compressors two on each side of the fuselage forward and after the center of gravity the output of the compressors would go through nozzles which could swing through 90° from pointing down to pointing back and as such an inferior would allow a transition from a vertical takeoff to horizontal flight after he was unable to interest the French government he approached NATO through the mutual weapons development program and was put in contact with Stanley Hooker the chief engineer at Bristol engines the two work together to come up with a new design that could be built from Mostly existing parts from different Bristol engines to create the Pegasus engine this would do away with the four compressors and instead have a large compressor fan on the front of the engine which would power the forward nozzles and then the exhaust from the engine would exit through the rear nozzles with a 60/40 split of thrust biased to the front work started in 1957 and although Bristol had the engine there wasn't an airframe available that would come from another company Bristol worked closely with Hawker aircraft they had just had their replacement for the Hawker Hunter canceled as part of a 1950 7 government white paper which stated that missile technology would be the thing of the future and that manned aircraft were effectively Obsolete and that many of the existing and new programs should be closed down to force consolidation within the sprawling British Aviation sector this left Hawker with the available resources to commit to a new project to build a new airframe that would use the Pegasus engine this project would go on to be known as the Hawker City p127 there was a supersonic version of the p1127 planned the p154 a Mac 2 capable aircraft which was put forward after the NATO basic military requirement number three was released for a supersonic VTOL Strike Fighter the p154 was selected as the technical winner from 11 submissions with the second place going to the dasal Mirage which used nine engines to Haw of sidley's one the political infighting that followed between the groups and their various supporters and the changing of the Strategic environment led to neither of them going into production today's video is sponsored by delete me if you've ever noticed that you've been subscribed to email lists that you have no idea about or receiving lots of cold calls from companies you know nothing of and stacks of junk mail with your name and address on it then there's a good chance that your details have gotten into the hands of data Brokers companies that buy and sell data to anyone who wants it data can include emails names current and past addresses age phone numbers occupation personal data photos and more this can be more than annoying if you're in sensitive areas like government military civil services or have a high profile for example it can be a security 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check them out quickly now we have to acknowledge that the Soviet Union around the same time was the only other country to get a Vall aircraft into a limited form of production this would be the yak 38 I have a whole video about that plane if you want to watch here but the yak 38 suffered from lack of investment as the Soviet Union was reaching its end days after the Soviet Union collapsed it was the subject of a technology transfer agreement with Lockheed and its unique features of the forward lift fan and the vector exhaust ended up as the basis for the Joint Strike Fighter program which became the f35b but vak 38 ended up like all the other Vall aircraft as a footnote in aviation history this left the p127 to carry on to prove its cap capabilities and validate the performance of the Pegasus engine in late 1961 nine production standard aircraft were ordered for evaluation by the RAF and the name Castel was officially used by 1964 a tripart valuation Squadron consisting of pilots from Britain United States and West Germany were trained on the entirely new original technique of flight that was demanded by the kestra but the rest of the aircraft was because of a traditional enough structure that it lent itself favorably to performing the intended ground attack operations which were envisioned for it one of the problems that the aircraft had was because of the engine and Vector thrust were quite large and the plane was relatively small there was no room for any internal weapons so everything had to be carried on hard points under the wing these would include multiple 2-in rocket batteries 30 mm Aiden cannon gun pods 450 kg or 1,000lb bomb loads or Napal and drop tanks for extended range its Central tandem Wheels were supported by Outriggers on the end of the wings for balance when maneuvering on the ground and these folded back once in flight so the aircraft could maintain its role and Pitch when it was in Hover mode reaction Jets or puffer units which directed compressed air from a compressor fan were located on the end of the Wings and at the front and rear of the aircraft which were used for stabilization there was just one lever to control the vector thrust nozzles that moved them from the vertical position for takeoff landing and hovering to the horizontal position for the normal flight the reaction Jets were also gradually increased in power as the nozzles rotated from horizontal to Vertical positions so that the pilot didn't have to manually control the stabilization once the aircraft had transitioned to a forward flly light the lift from the wing was enough to make it fly like a normal aircraft with standard controls however the workload on the pilot just to keep the aircraft in the air was much more than that of a normal aircraft and most of the accidents which occurred which were up to three times out of normal aircraft according to the US Marines were during the takeoff and Landing phases it was originally thought that helicopter Pilots would make good Harrier Pilots but it was found that actually fast jet Pilots could make make the transition to use Vector thrust quicker and better it wasn't only the air forces that saw the potential of Vall aircraft the Royal Navy and the US Marines could also see the usefulness of a fast jet aircraft that could be launched from a small carrier or even large amphibious assault ship though most would be launched with the aid of a ski jump on a small carrier and then land back vertically they were more concerned with the Soviet anti-ship missiles which had to be guided by Marine Patrol aircraft if NATO ships could carry fast jets with them without the need of a large aircraft carrier they could shoot down the guiding Patrol aircraft which would leave the missiles unguided the trials were successful and the modifications were made to what would become the first generation of Hawker Sidle Harrier gr1s and g3s and the av8a Harrier for the US Marines although the British and the US Marines like the Harrier they realize that its limited range and limited weapons carrying capacity greatly hampered it the potential it had if it had more power and greater carrying capacity so in the early 1970s a Cooperative effort between the US and United Kingdom was set up where McDonald Douglas and Hawker sidley would build an enhanced Harrier with more powerful engine larger composite Wing which could carry more weapons a redesigned and more aerodynamic fuselage and other structural refinements however the British were running out of money and budget cuts meant that they pulled out of a project in 1975 leaving McDonald Douglas to extensively redesign the earlier av8a to become the av8b by themselves in 1981 the now British Aerospace company rejoined a project but now with a diminished workshare of 40% of the airf frames and 75% of the engines but the Forkland war of 1982 would be the real testing ground for the British harriers flying from the light carriers HMS invincible and HMS Hermes these were the only fixed wi aircraft available to the British in the form of 20 seah harriers and eight Harrier g3s which arrived by cargo ship shortly afterwards these were up against approximately 122 Argentinian jet fighters of which 50 were used as air superiority Fighters the US Marines used a method called vipping or vectoring in forward flight this is where the pilot would alter the angle of a Thrust to be able to dramatically reduce the speed of the aircraft and get behind a following aircraft in a dogfight situation although the British Pilots didn't use this in the Forkland War the British shot down 28 Argentinian Fighters for zero losses of harriers in air-to-air combat but did lose two harriers to ground fire and another eight harriers were lost due to accidents and non-combat relation incidence and bad weather the major advantage the British had with the Harrier was that they didn't need to fly their fast Jets from either a large carrier or a long Runway both of which were not available under Forkland this also hampered the argentinians and meant that they had to fly from the mainland approximately 400 mil away or 660 km the harriers could land and take off almost from anywhere on the islands if need be and could land and take off from the aircraft carriers even though the decks were crowded with planes the harriers were used by the British the Americans the Spanish Italians Indians and Tha and will go on to be used in the two Gulf Wars the Kosovo war and Afghanistan but for Britain the country that actually created the Harrier it was decided to remove them from service in 2010 due to budget cuts but even that was a box job the f-35b which was meant to arrive in 2013 and replace for harriers didn't arrive until 2018 for the RAF and 2019 for the Navy in the process leaving the Navy without a fixed wi Fighter for almost 9 years or as the ministry of Defense would say the Navy was taking a capability holiday although the Harrier was still a good aircraft it no longer fitted into the modern Navy and Air Force it was a 1950s design in the 21st century and even though it had been updated it could not no longer compete against stealth technology advanced computer control aerodynamics and materials but even now 14 years later they are still used by the US Marines and the Spanish Navy and the last 72 British operated harriers were sold to the Americans for spares for $180 million less than the cost of two f-35bs and are now in the Boneyard at Davis Monon Air Force Base in Arizona but the one thing thearer can do that the f-35b cannot at least not that I know of unless of course you know better and let me know in the comments and that is to bow to the crowd at the end of its Air Show appearances which is a Pity because as the Harriet is such a specialized aircraft to fly and look after and is no longer with the RAF or the Royal Navy it's unlikely that we'll ever see them again at any air shows in the UK e

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 138,648

Keywords: jump jet, hawker harrier, GR1, GR3, GR7, AV-8A, AV-8B, raf, us marines, f-35b, paul shillito, curious droid

Id: K7LP1JAVtM4

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2024