On the road
By 1974, the AV-8A was mature enough
to take overseas. VMA-513 ‘Nightmares’
made the type’s rst ‘WestPac’ (western
Paci c) deployment from summer of
that year through summer 1975.
Re ecting on that 14-month
deployment, Lt Gen (ret’d) Harry Blot
recalls, ‘The objective was to show
us o . We went all over. We started in
Iwakuni, then we went over to Cubi in
the Philippines, we went into Taiwan, we
were over in Korea. It was an e ort by
the Marine Corps to let the world see the
capability of the airplane.’ In particular,
it wanted to demonstrate the feasibility
and tactical relevance of a V/STOL
attack platform.
‘What we were doing,’ Blot continues,
‘was trying to change the operational
plans by taking out A-4s and substituting
AV-8s. That was a lot of work because
the A-4 was a conventional airplane. The rst reaction was to just scratch out an
A-4 and put in an AV-8, and we’d have
to say, ‘no, you’re not taking advantage
of the airplane’.’ Laying out the Harrier’s
advantages over the Skyhawk, Blot
explained, ‘If things broke out in the
southern Philippines, they would all y
from Cubi Point, which is a long ight
down to the southern Philippines to do
any damage. Meanwhile, we could y
about three-quarters of the way and ndold WW2 air elds, land at them, and we’d
only have 40 or 50 miles to go. That was
the type of thing we were trying to bring
to the system.’
During this deployment, another
residual e ect of acquiring the Harrier
outside of NAVAIR channels manifested
itself. The marines relied on parts streams
that owed not from the US, but from
Britain, where the AV-8A was built. ‘On
the maintenance side, we were getting a
lot of parts, but the British supply system
and the US supply system weren’t 100
per cent together,’ Blot says. ‘The Brits
were saying ‘We sent you the parts,’ and
we’d say ‘We don’t have them!’ At some
point, one of our supply o cers went
down to the main western Paci c supply
point in the Philippines, in Cubi Point,
and found something like 500 parts
sitting there that they didn’t know what
to do with because they weren’t marked
the way they were supposed to be.’Success at sea
Along with forward, exible basing, the
maritime applications of the AV-8A were
obvious from the start. Free from the
need for catapults and arresting gear,Left: The ability to
perform dispersed
operations out
of expeditionary
airfi elds was
one of the main
reasons the
Marine Corps
purchased the
Harrier. An AV-8A
from VMA-513 is
prepared for fl ight
on an aluminum-
matting airfi eld,
most likely at
Twentynine
Palms.
Bottom:
A ‘Nightmares’
AV-8A taxies
out with live
ordnance at an
expeditionary
airfi eld.
Below:
A VMA-542
‘Tigers’ AV-8A.
Marine AV-8As
never saw
combat, but the
AV-8B has put
this operating
concept to work
during combat
missions in
Afghanistan.GLORY DAYS // AV-8A FROM THE COCKPIT
70 December 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net