Originally Posted by
Ninthace
What difference would it make if there was?
Hi Ninthace,
Thanks for replying.
In answer to your question: "Quite a lot... possibly."
Since 1996, the jet in the photo has widely been suspected to have been a Harrier, but no British Harrier could ever be found in the correct location at the right time. (See: Graeme Rendall's work online.)
The occasional suggestion that it was American (i.e. an AV-8B) was hence often dismissed out of hand by many people because it was a violation of Occam's Razor ("You're making this more complicated than it should be if it's a true story"), it was argued that there weren't supposed to be any in the UK at the time, plus logs from the nearest bases suggested no Harriers were there, and certainly no AV-8Bs.
We were told recently, however, that the craft in the photo WAS indeed an AV-8B. And that in another of the 6 photos, which no one has seen publicly but which is referred to in the loose memo from 1990 in TNA's files, that a second jet on-site was a British Harrier.
Now, a different source has come forward and told us that the Americans had 1 or more portable, temporary airfields in or around Glen Tilt in 1990. If that is so, suddenly, the possibility of someone flying from there to Calvine increases greatly, because it's a stone's throw away, and the encounter need not even have been planned. If there was a problem with the Diamond, for example, the nearest American air asset that could have been ordered to investigate might well have been only moments away. Might the diamond even have secretly come from the temporary base? The area has, after all, been home to secret aircraft trials since at least the early 1900s. If so, another long-standing objection - that the Diamond must have come from a long way away, and, if so, it would have been seen elsewhere along its flight path (but wasn't, ergo this is a hoax) - also perhaps starts to crumble.
Cheers.