Harrier 809 by Rowland White

Author:Rowland White [White, Rowland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473566637
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2020-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FIVE

A zebra’s backside

‘IF YOU LAUNCH,’ Bill Covington told Mike Layard, ‘you’re going to lose the aeroplane.’ From Conveyor’s bridge they looked ahead towards the Alert 5 SHAR, and the 809 Air Warfare Instructor didn’t like the look of it at all.

Neither, it had to be said, did Brave. While he sat in the Sea Jet’s cockpit preparing for a Red 90 vertical take-off, the ship was moving alarmingly beneath him. As she rolled to port, the nose of the little fighter pointed over the guardrails towards the heavy swell. Grey seas filled his field of view as he pitched forward against his straps. The ship held him there for a moment, before she began her roll back to starboard, whipping him through vertical until he was couched in his ejector seat on his back looking at the sky like a patient in a dentist’s chair. The attitude indicator projected on to his head-up display told him they were rolling through 30º.

It had been two days since Victors had been able to offer tanker support. With fresh demands on the Victor fleet from modified Nimrods and C-130s, now also capable of taking on fuel in-flight, the maths no longer worked.

If scrambled, the 809 SHAR was on its own.

‘The conditions you’re asking that aircraft to launch and recover in,’ Covington continued, ‘are making this highly problematic.’

Fleet Air Arm pilots didn’t make a habit of being overly impressed by a bit of weather. In the characteristically understated language of a naval aviator, Covington’s statement suggested that the conditions were more than a little sporty. Launching was one thing, but trying to hover and land on such a treacherous deck without rolling back into the guardrails or one of the shipping containers, not least the one nearest the pad loaded with Sidewinders, was quite another. The decision, ultimately, was simple. ‘Is this for real?’ Covington asked. And in acknowledging that on this occasion the order from Fearless to launch was merely an exercise, Layard agreed they should scrub. If the radar operators aboard the frigates had been confident that they had the Argentine Boeing in their sights it would have been a different matter, but it was senseless to risk flying the SHAR just to prove it could be done.

A relieved Dave Braithwaite returned to the bridge, happier to devote himself instead to thinking about how best to allocate the 809 pilots, now that word had come through that the squadron was to be shared equally between the two carriers.

It had been decided that the CO was going to Invincible. With two squadron bosses, 800’s Andy Auld and 899’s Neill Thomas, already aboard Hermes, the flagship didn’t need another. So Gedge was going to be joining Sharkey Ward’s team. The rest was back-of-an-envelope stuff. With Invincible leading the air defence effort, it made sense to send them the pilots with fighter experience. Hermes would get the mud-movers.

After a career spent trying to escape the attention of fighters, while flying ground attack in Buccaneers, Etendards and Harrier GR.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.