35 years ago a RAF Harrier destroyed part of a grass strip by simply applying full throttle on take off.
The following video has been around for some time now. Still, it’s quite funny and interesting as it shows what happened in 1980 to a RAF Harrier GR.3 that was taking part in an airshow at Bex, Switzerland.
The small airport, located in southwestern Switzerland, west of Sion, didn’t have a paved runway (nor does it have it today) but just a small taxiway leading from the main apron to the threshold of the grass strip.
However, when the Harrier pilot pushed the throttle forward to accelerate the aircraft down the runway something unexpected happened: the Rolls Royce Pegasus thrust-vectored turbofan engine unleashed some 21,500 lbf of thrust backwards, tearing up the upper layer of the runway including the RWY33 threshold and part of the taxiway.
Have a look:
Interestingly, it was not the first time the RAF Jump Jet took off from the grass strip at Bex: the following video shows the British Harrier GR.3 taking off from the same airport in 1978, without causing too much damage.
Now, as suggested by our friends at Tacairnet, just think to what would happen today if much more powerful F-35B were to perform a short take off run using Bex’s grass strip.
One of the few (if not the only) video showing a Harrier Jump Jet (nose) gear up landing on USS Bataan.
Here’s something you don’t see every day.
On Jun. 7, 2014, U.S. Marine Corps Capt. William Mahoney, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 263 (Reinforced), 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), had to perform Vertical Landing on USS Bataan, after his AV-8B Harrier aircraft experienced a front landing gear malfunction.
As he was climbing away from the deck he suddenly realized he had a gear malfunction. He immediately slowed down in order not to overspeed the landing gear, returned above the ship at 2,000 feet and started talking to “Paddles” (LSO – Landing Signal Officers), a pilot in the control tower who could provide assistance by radio.
The Harrier flew the approach at 300 ft so that the LSO could see the landing gear and give some guidance to put the nose on a tool the ship has for this kind of issues: a sort-of stool.
Since there’s no way to train to land in this kind of situation, the pilot had to fly a perfect vertical landing, using the ship lighting system and the help of LSO on his first attempt.
Luckily, he stabilized at 20 feet and managed to land in the proper spot as shown in the video (that, weirdly, was removed by the Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet feed that had published it; luckily, we found it again and reuploaded it since it is unclassified and released as you can see in the first frames of the footage).
Some of them were sold to the U.S. Marine Corps to serve as spares for a similar version of the “Jump Jet”, the AV-8B Harrier until the latter is replaced by the F-35B Lightning II, the STOVL version of the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter).
This footage will bring you back to the time when the British Harriers flew at high speed and ultra low level to train for CAS (Close Air Support) missions across the world.
H/T to AFM for publishing the link to this video on their FB page
It’s almost impossible to imagine the self discipline required to be stuck inside one of those for long periods of time but, believe it or not, Exint pods, man-carrying pods designed to be carried by fast jets and choppers exist.
They were conceived as an alternate method of inserting and extracting special forces (or wounded soldiers) and were developted by AVPRO UK Ltd in the late 1990s. They were reportedly tested on the Harrier jump jet, the AH-64 Apache and, according to some sources, were as still are certified for use on the Israeli AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters.
Bjørn Broten, a reader of The Aviationist has found a couple of images of the Exint pods on a militaryphotos.net forum thread.
According to several sources, a similar pod, dubbed GRIER (Ground Rescue Insertion Extraction Resupply) was designed by the McDonnell Douglas for the AV-8B Harrier, but it was never used (or, at least, there is no evidence of it being used) most probably because of the proximity of the pylon used to carry the pod to the noisy rotating jet nozzles of the Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine.
More recently, Special Forces have been carried on the weapon-carrying stub wings attack helicopters: the image below shows an Italian Army A-129 Mangusta chopper carrying two soldiers hanging from the helicopter’s landing gear legs.
Image credit: Militaryphotos.net & The Aviationist’s Giovanni Maduli
It’s almost impossible to imagine the self discipline required to be stuck inside one of those for long periods of time but, believe it or not, Exint pods, man-carrying pods designed to be carried by fast jets and choppers exist.
They were conceived as an alternate method of inserting and extracting special forces (or wounded soldiers) and were developted by AVPRO UK Ltd in the late 1990s. They were reportedly tested on the Harrier jump jet, the AH-64 Apache and, according to some sources, were as still are certified for use on the Israeli AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters.
Bjørn Broten, a reader of The Aviationist has found a couple of images of the Exint pods on a militaryphotos.net forum thread.
According to several sources, a similar pod, dubbed GRIER (Ground Rescue Insertion Extraction Resupply) was designed by the McDonnell Douglas for the AV-8B Harrier, but it was never used (or, at least, there is no evidence of it being used) most probably because of the proximity of the pylon used to carry the pod to the noisy rotating jet nozzles of the Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine.
More recently, Special Forces have been carried on the weapon-carrying stub wings attack helicopters: the image below shows an Italian Army A-129 Mangusta chopper carrying two soldiers hanging from the helicopter’s landing gear legs.
Image credit: Militaryphotos.net & The Aviationist’s Giovanni Maduli
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