Ahead of the release of his latest aviation book, Harrier 809, which looks at the events of the Falklands War and the BAe Sea Harrier’s part in it – ROWLAND WHITE reveals some fascinating facts from his research.
1. A handful of 809 Naval Air Squadron’s pilots, who had been urgently recalled to Yeovilton from as far afield as Arizona, California, Germany and Australia, had fewer than ten hours in the cockpit of a Sea Harrier when they went to war – less frontline training than was given to a Spitfire or Hurricane pilot in WWII.
2. Two Anglo-Argentinian veterans of RAF Bomber Command’s WWII campaign against Nazi Germany, volunteered to fly against the British during the Falklands War as part of Escuadrón Fénix, a paramilitary unit set up to fly business jets in support of Argentinian Air Force operations.
3. As a project pilot at China Lake, Mercury 7 astronaut Wally Schirra was the first pilot to fire a Sidewinder missile – a weapon that, in the AIM-9L version used by Sea Harrier in the Falklands, was so lethal that it was described by one of the development team as ‘a death ray’.
4. During fighter direction trials at RNAS Yeovilton prior to 809 Naval Air Squadron’s deployment, it was discovered that the liberal application of WD40 greatly increased the Sea Harrier’s radar signature.
5. Before settling on development of the Sea King AEW.2, the Department of Naval Air Warfare explored the possibility of reviving the Fairey Gannet AEW.3, equipping either the Hercules, BAe Coastguarder (itself a development of the HS748), and Chinook with AEW radar. Also considered was the Skyship 500 airship that featured in the James Bond movie, A View to a Kill.
6. One plan considered by the Ministry of Defence prior to launching Operation Corporate was to seize and hold mainland Argentinian territory in Tierra del Fuego and then use it as a stronghold from which to launch the campaign to retake the Falkland Islands.
7. The RAF’s Alert Measures Committee argued for the introduction of an ‘RAF flat-top’, an aircraft-carrying ship from which it could fly aircraft under Air Force, rather than Navy command and control. Members of the RAF Marine Branch, it suggested, might be used to help crew it.
Shortly before flying south during the Falklands War, 809 Squadron flew a photo sortie over southern England designed to signal strength in depth to an enemy that would soon meet the Sea Harrier in battle.
8. During trials conducted by the US Marine Corps, a clean AV-8A Harrier was capable of climbing to an altitude of 30,000ft 13 seconds faster than a clean F-4 Phantom. The Marine Corps also tested the Harrier against US-operated MiGs in dissimilar air combat at Area 51 in Nevada.
9. The Argentinian Navy tried to buy Falklands flagship HMS Hermes in the 1960s and, as late as 1979, British Aerospace was trying – with the blessing of the Foreign Office – to sell it the Sea Harrier as a replacement for the A-4 Skyhawk.
10. The Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough employed modelmakers to build 1:24 scale Airfix kits of the Harrier GR.1 that were then used to trial the effectiveness of new camouflage schemes devised by the RAE’s Defensive Weapons department.
11. In order for the RAF’s 39 Squadron Canberra PR.9s to have the range to reach Punta Arenas in Chile as part of Operation Folklore, they were fitted with hastily designed new internal fuel tanks. The flight plan required them to land on a section of the Pan American Highway in northern Chile to refuel from a waiting RAF C-130 Hercules before continuing their journey south.
12. 809 Squadron kept a Sea Harrier on Quick Reaction Alert during Atlantic Conveyor’s journey south. After a vertical take-off, it was calculated that it was capable of shooting down the shadowing Argentinian 707 at a maximum range of 183 miles. London had a pre-prepared press release written in anticipation of this happening.
A 809 Squadron Harrier on Atlantic Conveyor’s pad during the trip south. The aircraft was on alert to intercept Argentinian spyplanes tracking the Task Force.
13. The first enemy aircraft shot down by a Fleet Air Arm fighter launched from a merchant ship drafted into naval service was a Focke-Wulf Fw-200 Condor in 1941. The pilot of the ‘Hurricat’, Lt Bob Everett RNVR, was a former Grand National winning jockey.
14. Worried about the ‘thin blue line’ of Sea Harriers, United States Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger suggested letting the British use the 100,000t supercarrier, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a ‘mobile runway’. Unfamiliar with the complexities of naval aviation, an enthusiastic British Ambassador suggested that the RAF might fly Buccaneers from Ike’s deck.
15. There was a proposal to develop a Harrier T.4 into night-attack ‘Pathfinder’. Fitted with a forward-looking infra-red system operated by a crewman in the rear seat, the T-bird could either have mounted solo precision attacks at night or lead a flight of GR.3s flown by pilots wearing night-vision goggles.
A map of the route flown during ACME 4 produced to brief Britain’s Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Beetham, on the RAF’s remote South Pacific spy mission.
16. During Operation ACME, a 51 Squadron Nimrod R.1 suffered an engine failure while conducting a covert intelligence-gathering mission from a Chilean airfield. During the subsequent emergency landing on a remote South Pacific island, two tyres burst and a main undercarriage assembly was wrecked. On a subsequent mission, the same Nimrod was forced to evade an intercepting Mirage. A senior Chilean Naval Officer was on board the RAF spyplane during both incidents.
17. Ordered to leave Chile at short notice, an RAF C-130 Hercules, operating in support of Operation Folklore, was delayed for a few days in Tahiti by the French for arriving unannounced from Easter Island without the right diplomatic clearances. Tough work but someone’s got to do it.
18. Under the codename Operation Fingent, a Marconi S259 mobile radar from RAF Wattisham with a ten-man team of RAF operators was flown out to Chile to monitor Argentine air movements aboard a Flying Tiger Line Boeing 747. Always a stylish outfit, the airfreight company once set up a record company, Happy Tiger Records. Their final release, Mason Proffit’s 1971 album, ‘Movin’ Towards Happiness’, is actually pretty good . . .
19. Between 1962 and 1996 the King William Building at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich was home to an operational nuclear reactor called JASON. So far, at least it remains the only 17th Century, Sir Christopher Wren masterpiece to have been used for this purpose.
20. The Blue Vixen radar designed for the Sea Harrier FA.2 was so good that, when it was first used on operations in Bosnia, claims of contacts by SHAR not picked up by AWACS were not believed. The technological innovation at the heart of Blue Vixen occurred to its designer, Ferranti’s John Roulston, while waiting for a snow-delayed flight at Logan Airport in Boston.
21. Internet speculation that the long runway at Banjul in The Gambia – used as a stopover by 809 Squadron’s Sea Harriers on their way south – was originally built by aliens seems unlikely. However, the West African airport was designated as an official diversion field for the Space Shuttle in the event that a ‘Transoceanic Abort Landing’ was required.