person who made that scal decision
not to train in the UK did not understand
what the implications were for training
pilots in single-seat aircraft.’
The initial crop of marine Harrier
pilots were seasoned aviators — senior
captains and majors with combat and/
or ight-test experience — hand-picked
to y the AV-8A. With landings being
the most challenging aspect of ying
the Harrier, it was reasoned that pilots
of aircraft with the reputation of being
di cult to land would be best-suited to
take on the challenge. In the early 1970s,
that aircraft was the Vought F-8 Crusader.
Blot — an F-8 pilot himself — recalled,
‘We took almost every F-8 pilot we could
nd.’ Pilots from the Marine Corps’ F-4
squadrons, such as Maj Gen (ret’d) Joe
Anderson, comprised the second-largest
component of the early Harrier pilot pool.
With no NAVAIR support structure, it fell
on the shoulders of these early pilots
to develop the tactics, techniques, and
procedures (TTPs) that would govern
how the AV-8A was own, fought,
serviced, and repaired.
Writing the playbook
The rst USMC Harrier squadron was
VMA-513 ‘Flying Nightmares’ at MCAS
Beaufort. Harry Blot was among its
original Harrier cadre. With his seniority
and test background, much of the task
of establishing AV-8A TTPs fell to him.
Blot explained, ‘When I was assigned to
‘513’, the CO tasked me with writing the
NATOPS and the tactics manual for the
AV-8A. In the meantime, headquarters
Marine Corps tasked me with developing
thrust-vectoring [tactics] and they had
hired McDonnell Douglas to help with
all this. [Their] book-writing section was
taking all the English manuals they had
and converting them into ‘American.’ My
job was to make sure they got what we
wanted in there, so I had to help write
both of those.’
Explaining VMA-513’s role in writing
the AV-8A playbook, Blot told CA, ‘The
squadron was unusual in that the
Marine Corps took every test pilot out
of [NAS] Patuxent River and put them
in [the unit]. Pax River no longer had
the ability to test the airplane, and our
operational test people had nobody to
do it. So the squadron took on the role of
doing everything — being a squadron,
standing up, introducing a new airplane,
doing any development tests that came
along and any operational test that came
along. It was a very exciting time.’ Along
with all the basic TTPs common to any
marine attack jet — delivery pro les,
emergency procedures, and so on — Blot
and his colleagues had to nail down
procedures for V/STOL operations. This
included the numerous take-o and
landing options unique to the Harrier,
out of and into a variety of landing sites:
conventional air elds, expeditionary
air elds, roads, forest clearings,
The US Navy
vehemently
opposed the
purchase of the
Harrier. So they had
McDonnell Douglas
go to the British
government and buy
the airplanes, and
then sell them to the
Marine Corps
Col (ret’d) Russ Stromberg
Above: This
underside shot
of two VMA-513
AV-8As shows
off some of
the features
that allowed
the Harrier
to transition
between forward
and vertical fl ight
— the fuselage-
mounted, rotating
exhaust nozzles,
and the reaction
control ‘puffer’
jets, visible as
rectangular ducts
under the nose,
toward the front
of the outrigger
gear nacelle on
the wings, and on
the sides of the
tailboom. USMC
GLORY DAYS // AV-8A FROM THE COCKPIT
62 November 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net