Originally Posted by
Timelord
Remember that Harriers taking off vertically was strictly for air shows so some sort of strip would be required (cf “Sid’s strip in the Falklands) . Given that the whole area was thick with low flying aircraft at the time it would have needed some sort of avoid around it to avoid a 420 kt Buccaneer or Jaguar bumping in to a landing or launching Harrier. Such an avoid would be promulgated by Notice to Airmen (yes, yes, I know) or NOTAM. Is there a record somewhere of NOTAMS extant on the relevant dates.?
Plonking a “portable airfield” down in the middle of a very busy low flying area would not be a small undertaking, and would attract a lot of attention from the air and the ground and I never heard of such a thing, and I was doing a lot of low flying around then.
Thanks, as always, Timelord.
I agree that no one's landing a jet or high-tech craft on a patch of moorland. Please forgive the speculation. I'm just asking the Qs as they occur to me.
"Remember that Harriers taking off vertically was strictly for air shows." So this VTOL feature simply wasn't used under normal circumstances?
Can we read anything into this having allegedly been seen on a weekend, i.e. theoretically, the senior military knows this diamond is going to be brought in as a one-off, so they schedule it for a Saturday as no low flying is occurring? Would there hence be a need for a NOTAM for a top secret craft appearing just the once on a non-permanent airbase?
If (or rather IF) there also was a temporary airfield, though, and IF it had been built on private land, would that have aroused the same kind of interest from military personnel? There's what appears to be a simple turf airstrip at Blair Atholl, for example, not 5 miles from Calvine, that's over 300m/1,000ft long, with hangars, equipment, etc. One might imagine that being overlaid with matting, for example.
How quickly could a temporary runway or airpad be constructed? It looks, from the videos on YT, like a relatively simple task etc, especially if the land itself is already relatively flat.
Elsewhere, for example,
https://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/san-carlos-fob/ says:
"A little known aspect of the air war over the Falkland Islands in 1982 was the use of an austere Forward Operating Base (FOB) at San Carlos for Harriers and helicopters.
The design of the Harrier was predicated on operating away from large airbases and in austere operating bases that made use of rapidly laid runways, supermarket car parks and roads.
The dispersed operating concept for RAF Harriers was by 1982, both firmly established and well practised. 300m runways and 7 square metre vertical landing pads were the norm for such."
Similarly, there's this video of a Harrier taking off in the normal manner from an improvised airstrip:
Plus here are videos of a pad being constructed:
,
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Thank you.