"Basically, the nose gear wouldn't come done. The Harrier has a backup system with a nitrogen bottle to blow the gear down in this event. Well, someone significantly outranking the pilot ordered him not to blow the gear down (which is the specified emergency procedure) because by his 'superior' reasoning, if the nose gear didn't come down, he was afraid the jet would break its back by having all that weight on the long nose of the T-bird."
I'm sure that that would have been factored in when working out the SOP. Surely, the pilot could have ignored the advice or simply made squelching noises on transmit.. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you.. hello, can you hear me.? For a minute back there what with all the bad comms I thought you were asking if it was a good idea to land on a bed but that can't be right so I'm going to blow the nose wheel..".
Nice flying from Capt Mahoney, and I like his honesty after landing.. his brain had forgotten how to close the thing down.