combat aircraft

efectively. So we started teaching it and

we put the Sidewinder on the airplane.’

It was during this early period that

‘513’ had the opportunity to put the

AV-8A to the test against real MiGs.

Stromberg says, ‘[Blot] and some others

went out to what is now Area 51. At that

point in time, we had Soviet MiGs. It was

highly classiied, a black program, and

they went out there and that’s where

they igured out the use of thrust-

vectoring and all those types of things

for air combat maneuvering. They were

the ones who went out and took on

the F-14s and kicked their ass. So, Blot

and those early hand-picked guys, they

wrote the irst tactics manual for the

AV-8A, and they basically got 90 per

cent of it right. They were just that good

and that knowledgeable.’

Learning to tame the

‘Jump Jet’

Stromberg irst strapped on a Harrier

early in his career, and was one of the

three 1st lieutenants admitted into the

Harrier program in 1973. At this point, the

marines had ceased sending pilots to the

UK for Harrier training. With no NATOPS

training program, no Harrier conversion

unit, and no two-seaters for training, it fell

on the three AV-8A ‘gun squadrons’ to train

new Harrier pilots on a rotational basis.

‘Our training aid was the throttle

quadrant out of a crash-damaged British

Harrier mounted on a one-by-six [piece

grass ields, and numerous types of
amphibious shipping.
In addition to sorting out the TTPs
for forward basing, road operations
and everything that went along with
operating a V/STOL CAS platform, Blot
and others at ‘513’ put the AV-8A to
work in the air-to-air realm, developing
the tactics for Harrier pilots should they
ind themselves tangling with MiGs
in the absence of dedicated ighter
support. Though it was not designed
for the task, Blot foresaw several
scenarios in which the AV-8A might
ind itself squaring of against enemy
ighters. ‘The Harrier could be the only
airplane capable of lying because
either we were operating of ‘amphibs’
or they had destroyed the runways
we were on,’ he explains. ‘We wanted
it to have an air-to-air capability, so
then we went about developing the
tactics using thrust vectoring, and we
found out that you could use it very

Right top to

bottom: A

VMA-513 AV-8A in

formation with an

A-4M Skyhawk

and F-4J

Phantom. Pilots

from VMA-513

established

defensive air-to-

air tactics that

took advantage

of the Harrier’s

thrust-vectoring

nozzles. USMC

Though it was

not a weapon

commonly

carried by the

AV-8A, NAWS

China Lake’s

VX-5 tested the

AGM-122 SideARM

— a repurposed

AIM-9C

Sidewinder

designed to lock

on to radars and

destroy them.

NAVAIR

Below:

Establishment

of VMAT-203 as

the Harrier fleet

replenishment

squadron and

the introduction

of the two-seat

TAV-8A trainers

corrected most

of the training

deficiencies

created by

acquiring the

Harrier outside

of established

NAVAIR channels.

USMC

http://www.combataircraft.net // November 2018 63