Talk:Hawker Siddeley Harrier

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[edit] where was the GR1 developed??

I read here that testing was done in Somerset but I have a very clear recollection of a lot of testing going on at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Bedford in 1981/2? (looking out of the school windows at Harriers looping round and round!!)

[edit] skijump

perhaps it was the skijump itself rather than the aricraft that was under development? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.8.115.252 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Variants

I've started cleaning up the Variants section - it would be really good to have separate sub-articles for each. Idealy the main article should be 'the story of' the Harrier - military role and evolution - and the sub-articles a detailed technical description. I'd like to separate Hawker P.1127 and Hawker Siddeley Kestrel more strictly (the latter is a redirect to the former !) and add Hawker Harrier GR.1 up to Harrier GR.9. We need a consensus as to if it is GR9 or GR.9 - comments please. PeterGrecian 14:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Harrier Jump Jet is a disambiguation page. That page could be expanded to cover the overall history, especially military role and evolution, of the P.1127/Kestrel/Harrier/Harrier II family. -BillCJ 18:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
What about AV-8B? --Mrg3105 03:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • That's a Harrier II. -Fnlayson 03:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Section on Controls and handling - added

Have started a section in this article on the piloting skills, etc, required for this aircraft, based on a few google hits and the one week training course I attended on Royal Navy aircraft some years ago. Not much to go by then; actual pilots or engineers should work on this section. I put this section in the Harrier I article; opinions on whether it should be moved to the article on the newest model are welcomed.--ChrisJMoor 02:53, 14 January 2006 (UTC)


I'm surprised there's no mention of viffing involved; as far as I knew, all modern variants of any harrier are cleared for these manuevers.JaderVason 16:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] none was lost to enemy aircraft in the Falklands

Would be notice that the enemy planes haven't any capable air-to-air missile and were also on their flight time limit meanwhile the harriers were waiting on station. Spitfires with those AIM-9L perhaps would get the same victories. On the other side, like argentines aircraft, they were very vulnerable to anti aircraft guns and could not destroy the Stanley runway in 74 days, in spite of having all the NATO inventory of air-surface bombs available. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jor70 (talk • contribs)

They didn't have every weapon available to them though as it was such a rush to get the task force together different equipment was on different ships sailing at different times. Aswell the argentine pilots were told not to engage the harriers but go straight for the fleet, otherwise the result might have been different.yerkschmerk

[edit] Picture

Considering that this article is about the first generation Harriers, is it really appropriate to have a photograph of a second generation Harrier? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.30.147.43 (talk • contribs)

Maybe we should find one of google then (and ask for if we can use it obviously)

[edit] Why are Entries being removed?

Why are some people taking it upon themselves to remove factual information concerning the fact that this aircraft featured in the John Travolta film Battlefield Earth, whereas other films and games are being allowed to stay?

I can see no reason for the removal. A fact is a fact, and the film in infamous for it's stupidity.

For details of the entries made by myself, and others, please see the article history.

If it isn't deemed important for this information to remain, then perhaps there shouldn't be anything concerning the aircraft's affect on Popular Culture, or films and computer games whatsoever.

I don't think it is reasonable to include one fact, while deeming another, of equal importance, to be unimportant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RobAnt (talk • contribs)

Alot of weapons have links to seperate entries on the impact in popular culture, such as films and games, mabye thats a good idea, By the way the reason your article may have been removed is because the film used the Harrier II not the original. yerkschmerk

Harrier Jump Jet in popular culture Drutt 18:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Development of VIFFing

In response to a comment on my talk page, I've started researching the origins of the VIFF maneuver. It looks like the British were the first to experiment with it, and the USMC was the first to perform organized experiments with the technique:

[1]

More information and cites are probably necessary, but this might give us a start on an informative VIFF section. SkipSmith (talk) 05:40, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Basically that means British pilots "played around" with VIFFing on their own, your souce including a mention of a pilot being court martialed for it - hardly worthy of the term "experiment", which is not in your source. I think the line currently in the text, "The air combat technique of vectoring in forward flight, or viffing, was developed by the USMC in the Harrier to outmaneuver a hostile aircraft or other inbound weapons", stands as written, and is supported by your source. Your source also mentions NASA testing VIFFing on the XV-6A Kestrel, which predates the Harrier's service entry.
As to placing a section in the text on VIFFing, I think the best place for that would be the Harrier Jump Jet article. The Controls and handling section there already has a short paragraph on the technique, and expanding it would be a great idea. We can link such a section to the menionig of VIFFing in this article.
I think many people will read "developed" as "invented", and believe that VIFFing was invented by the USMC. The USMC deserves a mention, of course, but then earlier experiments and tests should also be mentioned, which is why I'm proposing creating a separate section for VIFFing. In looking at other sources, I found this [2], which describes the British as the first to "explore" VIFFing techniques, and the first formal studies being done by the USMC. It might be best to move discussion of the development of VIFFing to a separate section, where the entire history can be laid out in detail.
As far as your earlier question about things to rewrite or change, the first sentence in the paragraph we're discussing appears to be a sentence fragment. In fact, that whole paragraph seems out of place in the "Operational History" section. I'll be busy the next few days, but I can attempt a rewrite/cleanup after that. SkipSmith (talk) 07:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Your second source has some good references that would be worth digging into, but the source itself is not reliable by Wikipedia standards. Good catch on that paragraph though, as it is a partial duplicte of the last paragraph in the previous section. Might have been an accidental copy-paste that no one caught beforehand. That was why I asked for specifics, as I had totally missed it! Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 08:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)