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.
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.
So a fantastic office.
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.
I think the Harrier is an almost perfect amalgam
of a warfighting capability, but a real engineering
triumph.
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.
But having said that, it was a fabulous warfighting
capability as well.
And part of that capability was the basing options that it would give you.
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 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.
And later in Afghanistan, where we were operating in really thin, high hot air.
The ability for the Harrier to be there was one of its really key attributes.
The Harrier has been in operational service with the Royal Air Force since early 1969.
So why was it developed?
I think the after the Second World War in particular, people were intrigued by the still
flight vertical short takeoff and landing flight.
And there were a couple of attempts made.
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.
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.
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 is controlled like any other aircraft, it's got aerodynamic surfaces which develop
lift and therefore that's how you if you move the stick you move the control surface and
the aircraft, rolls goes up, goes down, et cetera.
That way things are done in the Harrier which make it unique is that, the really high pressure
from the engine is also taken in pipes called reaction control veins out to the extremities
of the aircraft.
So in the wing tips in the nose and in the tail.
And that means that when you start to deploy nozzle size and take nozzle from fully aft
to fully down at about the 20 degree point, those start charging up.
That means that you're that fully charged by the time you get in the hover.
And then rather than using air flow over the wings like any other aeroplane does, you're
now using jets in the wing, tips, the nose and the tail to control the aeroplane.
So when I pull back on the stick, the puffer duct in the nose opens, pushes down, the nose
comes up, and I drift backwards.
The wings are slightly more tricky because there is actually an up and a down.
You want all your thrust going down if you can.
So to start with, the aircraft just uses a bit of down thrust on one of the wings.
If you really need maneuverability and you're moving the stick a long way, it'll open the
up one on the other side as well.
But so that's how it works in the hover.
I started flying to see Harrier in about the year 2000 after the end of SAS jet training,
then went down to Royal Naval Air Station near Wilton to go to 899 Naval Air Squadron.
And that's when we learned to fly in the Harrier, starting with a couple of trips in the twin
seater.
Then you're thrown into the single seat of your first solo on three.
Then you had a go twin seat hovering with someone showing you what to do, and then it
was straight into hovering on your own thereafter.
My first deck landing was done just off Plymouth.
There's no way that you can do this in the simulator, there certainly wasn't at the time.
So the way that we used to do it on the Sea Harrier Force was it wasn't actually addressed
during the training course.
You went to the front line and the first available opportunity, you simply went and landed on
an aircraft carrier.
I've said it quite often, but the funny thing about landing on ships is they don't seem
to get any bigger until you're actually alongside them.
You fly towards a small speck in the sea.
You marshall above a small speck in the sea, and then you make an approach to a small speck
in the sea.
And it's only when you're alongside trying to hover the aircraft at the right height
and sort out your forward motion that you're actually now alongside a big bit of British
metal that you're trying to land on.
And so it's quite a fraught experience, but a very rewarding one.
So the Sea Harrier was a Harrier 1, which meant that we went from the P1127 Demonstrator
to the Kestrel to the Sea Harrier 1 very, very quickly.
And one way that manifested itself is that essentially no thought was given into how
it was going to be maintained and how it was going to be fought.
The FA2 that I flew was an upgrade of the first Mk1 that flew in the Falklands.
It had a far, far better radar, a world class radar and a world class weapon, and that made
it a great fleet defense fighter that had a multi role.
We could still drop bombs, we could still do a limited reconnaissance task.
Going to the new aeroplane, the role sort of reversed insomuch as we were now a air
to surface platform with a limited air to air role.
So that was something to get your head around.
But the machine itself was fabulous and it was a Harrier too.
It was not the all metal Harrier 1.
It had a bigger wing and had a far more forgiving wing.
That meant that actually flying it was a lot easier, had a lot more weapons station so
you could carry more fuel and more weapons.
And the cockpit was a ergonomic dream.
It really was.
Everything was at your fingertips.
It had nice big displays, and it was perfectly set up for giving the pilot all the information
that he or she needed to do their role.
Whereas in the earlier aeroplane, that was a bit more of an afterthought.
All jets are a compromise.
This there isn't a jet on the planet that isn't a compromise.
Even if the compromises are the financial side of things, the money it took to make
it the Harrier is not going to be able to carry as much and take it as far as land based
air systems.
But it doesn't need a long runway to do it.
It has flexibility of basing options.
And so actually it would still find its way into a force mix of other aircraft.
When you look at things like the American aeroplanes, mainly land based.
So, for example, the F-16.
Yes, flexibility can turn really, really tightly.
It's a single engine, single seat, very similar to the Harrier in some of the roles it can
do.
But it's got that lovely air to air roll that it does very, very well indeed.
And the anti SAM role that it can do.
But as a striker, then what did the Harrier give you?
It gave you flexibility of weapon load.
It gave you quite a large weapon load.
So it could still fight its corner, if you like, and would be relevant in most contemporary
warfare situations.
In about 2006, I went up the road to Cottesmore to start flying the GR7 and GR9.
It was a mixed fleet at the time.
I had to go via a desk job.
I spent a bit of time at Royal Air Force High Wickham, but then went up the road to do what
was called the conversion course to learn how to fly the new aeroplane.
I think the sensations of flying a fast jet are largely common as and the speed will be
alien when you first strap into one.
The thing that will really get you with Harry a flight is that most people are fairly okay
with the thought, the thrust being behind you when you can move your thrust and it's
£21,000 of thrust being vectored by, like I said earlier, up to 90 degrees, that throws
you around in the cockpit and that can at times feel like being in a bit of a tumble
dryer, particularly if you overcook it slightly and the jet does actually depart from control
flight, then it's a bit of a ride and you get on with recovering the aeroplane.
So largely common sensations with other fast jets, but a few Harrier-isms as well.
So I deployed to Afghanistan as part of the Joint Force Harrier detachment.
What we did there was essentially keep a three unit cycle going for five years, just over
five years, I believe.
I went there with a naval strike wing in 2008.
And as ever the joint force just made things work.
It was completely seamless.
As to whether or not you are a Royal Air Force Squadron or Royal Navy Squadron.
Our job was simply to help the ground forces who are the real heroes in this.
The people with boots actually on the ground, seeing the things, smelling the things that
we didn't have to.
The missions would vary anything from what
we called non-traditional intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance, so that might be sweeping a route for an infantry patrol, for example,
it might be taking reconnaissance photographs or it might be direct close air support.
So what we would generally do is some sort of graduation of hostilities where we would
start - if the ground commander asked us to - with what's called a show of force over
the top of the enemy position, show we meant business, down 100 feet at about 490 knots,
give or take, depending on the day.
And that could then graduate up into use of lethal force.
We used to fly when I first got there, a mix of coffee, seven rockets and £540 weapons
on one aircraft.
Laser guided bombs on the other.
We then got a new laser guided bomb called the pay for, which was superb.
So both jets now flew with two paisley fours and two rocket pods along with all the sensors
we needed to on the valley.
So this is my logbook, my roll naval flying log and it say at a sortie by sortie record
of all my flights and all aeroplanes that I flew within the Royal Navy.
So if I look here in July 14 of 2009, I flew Zulu Delta Force 61, which is the aeroplane
you see suspended behind me.
I was on my own and my job was to go and do an electronic warfare mission in the speed
at them ranges.
And essentially we go there to exercise against surface to air missile systems to see if our
countermeasures and our tactics work against them.
Can we fly the maneuvers to essentially break locks on those radars and keep ourselves safe?
It's odd to see one that you've actually strapped to your back.
That's that's a little bit strange.
And it looks like I had an hour and 40 of some of which 10 minutes was in cloud, which
probably wasn't that much fun.
I was away with the French navy in 2010.
I was on that aircraft carrier shoulder to go when I received the news that we were going
to get out of service.
So there was a significant element of bitterness and sadness, mainly because we had up until
very, very recently done such a fabulous job in Afghanistan.
And we were doing a damn good job of what we were calling regenerating into a force
able to do other things, many of which were from the sea base.
So we were doing a lot of carrier embarked flying at about that time.
I've got no qualms about the fact that the people who made those decisions did them for
all the right reasons.
We ran out of money.
We had to save money, we had to retire an aircraft type, but it still feels like a bit
of a kick in the teeth.
And I think the proof of the pudding is that right now there are US Marine Corps Harriers
deployed as hostilities rage in the East.
Right now the Spanish have got their Harriers up working with the US Navy and it's 12 years
since we got rid of ours.
So still a relevant platform I'm going to read a short excerpt from my book Harrier
How to Be a Fighter Pilot that has recently been published, of which I'm very proud.
And at the end I set myself the quite considerable task of trying to work out what the best moment
I did have whilst flying aeroplanes with the Royal Navy in the Joint Force and the US Navy
was and I came up with this at the very end.
It's hard to be categorical about my best moment in the Royal Navy, however tied for
first place, is that moment in a dusty valley somewhere near collapse in Afghanistan when
the firing had stopped and the ground forces could speak with normal tones and breathing
rate, which meant that Simon and I had done our duty.
Sharing top spot is when I found out that I was a Sea Harrier pilot.