Originally Posted by
Engines
(To correct a previous post, the RN Sea Harrier fleet had about 33 active aircraft out of around 52 airframes. It actually had new build aircraft in storage to support the active fleet in the planed 'out years'. But that was to support two front line units comprising no more than 8 aircraft per active carrier.
I hate to sound presumtuous, but I have to disagree here. The peace-time organisation had three SHAR squadrons (800, 801 and 899 training squadron), with nominal complements of 8 FA2s for each of the front-line squadrons and 10 for 899 giving a total of 26 aircraft. I've just checked in my files and found these statements made repeatedly in all the requirements documents for the FA2 mod programmes - the original FA2 MLU programme, the IN/GPS upgrade, the JTIDS upgrade and even the abandonned SIFF and big-engine projects.
They all say the same thing - an active fleet of 26 aircraft to be used as the basis of support planning and a total number of kit sets to cover a total fleet of 44 aircraft. This is also repeated in the quantities of aircraft covered in the "by air" and "by road" RTW reports for the IN/GPS programme, so it would seem that these numbers were real and not just planning assumptions.
The squadron numbers were pumped up a bit during the Falklands War, but only by sending FRS1s from 899 Sqn to add to the existing 800 and 801 sqns (and the briefly reformed 809 sqn) to fill the available carrier space, not by increasing the overall numbers.
PDR