![]() The nozzles had over a 90 degrees worth of travel and that gave you flexibility and combat, but also many different ways of landing and taking off. The Harrier was the one that really got to grips with the vectored thrust, the ability to move the thrust from straight off where you're flying like any other aeroplane and able to behave like any other aeroplane to straight down where you are able to hover on a stack of air and also everything in between that. You'll probably have seen the flying bedstead, which was just a way essentially of directing thrust downwards and then attempts were made to launch aircraft vertically essentially by standing them on their tail. Paul Tremelling: “I think the after the Second World War in particular, people were intrigued by the still flight vertical short takeoff and landing flight.Īnd there were a couple of attempts made. News reader: “The Harrier has been in operational service with the Royal Air Force since early 1969.” The ability for the Harrier to be there was one of its really key attributes.” And later in Afghanistan, where we were operating in really thin, high hot air. And that made a really flexible machine, which gave it relevant specs in the Cold War when we were worried about basing options in the Falklands War, when by sea was the only way to get to the fight. ![]() So, for example, we could land on ships, we could land on highways, we could land on short strips, we could even land in and woodland, et cetera, in prepared hides. And part of that capability was the basing options that it would give you. But having said that, it was a fabulous warfighting capability as well. The ability to take off slow, turn it into thrust and divert it through the nozzles to give you the vertical landing and takeoff capability is incredible. I think the Harrier is an almost perfect amalgam of a warfighting capability, but a real engineering triumph. My name is Paul Tremelling and I had a career in the fleet around on Flying Sea Harriers, Harriers and later the Super Hornet with the US Navy. It's a single seat cockpit, and the real virtue of the Harrier is its ability to land and take off vertically, but also conventionally and all ways in between. Paul Tremelling: "The GR9 behind me, as you can see, is a fighter aircraft, it's primarily designed for air to surface and therefore, one of our strengths was close air support.
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