combat aircraft

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