Originally Posted by
John Farley
Alfred
I don’t think I mentioned doing it when sailing for the first time and please be assured I quite realise the crew will have plenty of non-aviation matters to sort out for quite a few trips to put it mildly. However if (big if)
PR needs arise then flying a USMC/Italian Navy/Spanish or Indian Navy Harrier to and from the deck would not be a problem. All that would be needed for safe operation would be a common r/t frequency and a bit of fire cover.
Indeed the first ship I ever flew from (the USN La Salle in May 1968) was at the time anchored in the bay at USN Norfolk. She had some sailors on board accepting the ship before it entered service and they were able to offer r/t and fire cover. The sortie started from a road in the base and was for the benefit of a bunch of Admirals watching from the flight deck of a nearby carrier so that they could see how easy it was to operate a jet from a ship’s helo platform – especially a jet designed to not need any yellow gear. Indeed I even shut it down for a while on the deck to emphasise that point plus it allowed a couple of my chaps to attach some external stores so that I could carry something during the subsequent post VTO smash about for the Admirals to watch.
Subsequently I flew from over a dozen different ships and learned something new each time – just as I imagine Harrier visitors to the QE would from such training sorties.
JF
Well, for a start, the Flight Safety regime that was in force in the 60s is very different to the one we have today. I'm not sure why we'd waste time and effort on establishing SHOLs for any version of Harrier before we established them for the F-35. Neither can you simply land on an aircraft without a fully worked up Ship, and Flight Deck crew - why would you start that process with a VSTOL aircraft that won't be the main user of the deck when you could use RW and then F-35? Might it be, and give me some latitude here, that the trials and testing programme that has been established might be a relatively efficient way of getting F-35 onto the deck in a reasonable time, and dicking around with that timeline would have disproportionate effect?