Harrier's end.

[Elroy Blue]

Predictable, but kind of sad. There was plenty of life in the old dog.

http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/486351-all-...

[fatboy69]

That makes me quite sad. Bizarrely I have just been watching footage of a Harrier taking off from an aircraft carrier many years ago.

My 6 year old son has never seen a Harrier & couldn't get his head around the fact that it cold take off vertically, hover & fly forwards so quickly!!

Also showed him the footage where James May is in the passenger seat, his plane is flying in formation with another Harrier & the pilot hits the 'brakes'.

The other Harrier disappears off into the distance whilst Mays' plane almost comes to a full stop. Awesome plane & it's a shame that then RAF havent retained a Harrier in airworthy condition.

[Athlon]

There are one or two at RNAS Culdrose, or at least there was until recently, I belive they are used for teaching aircraft carrier handling.
I don't know if they can fly but they certainly were moving on the ground last year and I could see one parked up in May this year.

[PaulG40]

Saw the pics on a lads Facebook yesterday, sad sad end but at least they were the twin seaters. No love lost on those, lol.

[Defcon5]

Do the Americans have Harriers then? And have bought these to get spare parts for their own?

Or have they bought them to use them?

[evoivboy]

very sad to see, although my late father did say they where not being used in the way he and his fellow designers built it for, especially the sea harrier
unfortunately i dont remember much of his hawker work as i was to young and only really learnt what he did after he died.
i do remember in the sixties as they where trying to get it completed, my father was working 7 days a week so we all used to go to Dunsfold to see him, usually having picnics with harriers hovering above our heads

[harryowl]

Defcon5 said:

Do the Americans have Harriers then? And have bought these to get spare parts for their own?

Or have they bought them to use them?

yes
yes
no

[Boatbuoy]

Yep, the USMC (United States Marine Corps) operates the AV-8B, their name for airframe that was the latter RAF varient.

As far as I know, none of the UK Harriers will fly again, and instead stripped for spares to support the USMC fleet.

A friend of mine - who was an engineer on them and was involved in the crating up of the UK jets for shipment to the US - posted this very sad pic on Facebook the other day:

[MartG]

Defcon5 said:

Do the Americans have Harriers then? And have bought these to get spare parts for their own?

Or have they bought them to use them?

I heard that the original plan was to just strip them for spares, but on inspection after delivery they were found to be in better condition than some of the USMC's flying airframes ( mainly thanks to the £100M+ refurb we'd just put them through before selling them for 1/10 of that ) so they were thinking of returning at least some of them to flying status, cannabiising their current aircraft for the US specific parts required

[Elroy Blue]

58 of the are currently at AMARG, both twin and single seaters.

[Eric Mc]

Defcon5 said:

Do the Americans have Harriers then?

Americans
Spanish
Italians
Singapore
Indians