A
LL TACTICAL AIRCRAFT
should possess a short/
vertical take-o and
landing capability as soon
as it is technically feasible
without sacri cing existing
mission capabilities,’ said Gen Randolph
Pate, commandant of the US Marine
Corps in 1957. As the F-35B Lightning
II embarks on its rst operational
deployments, it’s worth looking back
at the early days of USMC vertical/
short take-o and landing (V/STOL)
operations. Though the F-35B has its
origins in the early 1990s, you have to go
much further back for the genesis of the
concept that led to its creation.
Some 60 years on from Pate’s
statement, with the F-35B replacingthe Hornet, Harrier II, and Prowler in
Marine Corps service, it appears his
vision is nally being implemented. The
road leading to the F-35B is long, the
rst practical steps towards it having
been taken in the late 1960s, when the
marines decided to procure the Hawker
Siddeley Harrier from Great Britain.
Marine Corps interest in a V/STOL
tactical aircraft was initially focused on
the major Cold War threats of the 1950s:
the Soviet Union in eastern Europe
and communist China on the Korean
peninsula. As Lt Gen (ret’d) Harry Blot,
one of the rst AV-8A pilots in the corps
recalled, ‘After Korea, the Marine Corps
recognized that air could play a vital
part in supporting the ground. We were
caught in a dilemma. The two highestpriorities were NATO — 17,000 tanks
across the Fulda Gap, and Korea, with
11,000 tanks. That tells you that you
need to be heavy to get there. But the
Marine Corps is tasked with being the
rst to ght — you get there right away
and give the powerhouse, the army and
the air force, 30 days to get ready. We
couldn’t be heavy and accomplish that.’
One of the corps’ greatest challenges
was getting its eld artillery to the ght
quickly and in the numbers required to
match the threats. This was the planning
problem that Blot said led to the USMC’s
increased reliance on its own tactical
air power. Blot explains, ‘If I can under-
gun myself with artillery but count on
airplanes providing that repower, I
can be more mobile. The Marine Corps‘In the fi rst of a two-part series, Combat Aircraft looks back at
the AV-8A Harrier, the US Marine Corps’ fi rst step towards an
all-V/STOL tactical air force.REPORT Joe Copalman
Below: The US
Marine Corps’ fi rst
foray into vertical/
short take-off
and landing
operations came
with the AV-8A
Harrier. This
AV-8A (BuNo
159366) is from
the training
unit VMAT-203,
which came into
existence well
after the type
originally entered
service.
The Aviation Photo
Company58 November 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net