Harrier Boys, Volume 2 by Bob Marston

Author:Bob Marston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grub Street Publishing
Published: 2017-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

IN WITH THE NEW

SIMON TURNER

With a combination of good fortune and a natural ability to avoid promotion above the rank of squadron leader, I managed to achieve a career full of variety and some fabulously operational flying with an unbroken fourteen years on the jet of choice. My career straddled GR3 to GR7 and included most of the GR3 highlights, like Belize, Norway, OLF, Option Zulu, the Field, Deci for APC and ACMI. Thereafter, it was the transition to GR5, with all its frustrations, teething problems and operational limitations, into an exchange tour flying the AV-8B with the USMC at Yuma before the GR7 at Wittering with 1(F) and 20(R) Squadrons. I was lucky enough to gain extensive exposure to all of these Harrier types, with good continuity whilst in positions of operational significance to either my squadron or the force.

GR3 ops can be summarised as being extensively about Cold War tactics, essentially two dimensional with everything happening at low level. Weapons were relatively imprecise and employed the shotgun principle using multiple warheads to hit the target, mostly in the forward edge of the battle area. Most weapons were employed at relatively close range to the target, thus reducing the time of flight of the weapon and therefore minimising the miss distance associated with aiming errors. The results achieved during GR3 weapons training were mostly good, despite the limited capabilities of the aiming system and weapons in use. But there was no doubting that the operation was very dynamic and intense in nature. For example, my first tour of 4½ years with IV(AC) Squadron yielded 991 flight hours (excluding OCU flying) and 1,243 flights. Pilots could expect to be well qualified by the end of their first tour, unlike the later Harrier days. For me it was FRI, ACI, QWI, Zulu Leader and a whole bunch of routine quals like fours lead, aggressor, ACL etc.

The trademarks of GR3 ops were field operations and multi-aircraft formations like Option Zulu. I flew twenty-six flights in five days on my second field deployment. With this kind of continuity the aircraft becomes another limb, everything is at your fingertips and the cockpit feels like home, comfortable and familiar. Flying the max of six flights per day left the aircraft available for another three waves thereafter, the jets were reliable, the engineering extremely efficient and the responsibility was as huge as the rewards. Field peculiarities included no radio transmissions so no ATC, always a plus. The threat from Soviet jamming equipment was such that they could locate and jam a frequency after a two-second transmission. So we checked out to every operational frequency to avoid being jammed until we had at least managed to make urgent operational calls, such as missile breaks, before checking out or auto chopping to the next frequency. The net result was that we flew most of our missions from the field without making a single radio transmission. This included large multi-aircraft formations, which made the formation rendezvous interesting when

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