As Harriers left Laarbruch in 99 I think 97 or 98 would be right. Can’t remember the exact circumstances but the Harrier had a manual opening valve for the nose u/c doors. On shut down the lineys would pull and turn the tee handle that opened the doors. This would allow work in the u/c bay to be carried out. It would stay in this position all the time the a/c was on the ground. It was then part of a see off to check the tee handle was stowed and flush ( our heroes would also check it on their walk around). During maintenance though and doing gear retractions it was quite common to have the doors open with the nose gear retracted to check clearances. In these circumstances door jack gags should have been fitted. I would own up myself though to having retracted the gear, pulled the tee handle for a peer into the bay before resetting it, basically opening then closing the doors. When working on the NWS system there was also a check to steer off, select up and make sure the gear steered to 0 degrees before retracting. In this case the nose u/c ground lock would be fitted to stop the leg actually moving. The thing I can’t remember is whether it was a faulty valve or practice that caused the incident. The valves and their rigging had an issue and caused a number of state 2’s when tee handles that looked flush on take off left the doors open causing a nose gear unlocked indication. I could go on for ages about the through life issues of the door and u/c rigging of the Harrier........but I would bore all other than true Harrier Mafia chaps!
One final thing, it’s still criminal that such an iconic aircraft will be missing from the 100 Year Flypast, considering that the USMC are extending the life of theirs due to other platforms shortcomings!