The AV-8B
The AV-8B Harrier II V/STOL (vertical and short take-off and landing) strike aircraft was designed to replace the AV-8A and the A-4M light attack aircraft. The Marine Corps requirement for a V/STOL light attack force has been well documented since the late 1950s.
Combining tactical mobility, responsiveness, reduced operating cost and basing flexibility, both afloat and ashore, V/STOL aircraft are particularly well suited to the special combat and expeditionary requirements of the Marine Corps.
Pete Bowen, former USMC AV-8B Harrier II Pilot/instructor (CLICK HERE to checkout his Podcast and blog), recalls on Quora;
‘Naval aviators rarely get scared. We sometimes get ‘really uncomfortable’.
‘I was returning to NAS Cubi Point in an AV-8B Harrier II as a wingman after one of the last Cope Thunder exercises in the Philippines.
Harrier vertical landing
‘The runway at Cubi is 07 / 25. With a weather front passing through, we were landing 25. The winds were blowing pretty hard and changing, so I decided to do a vertical landing.
‘In a Harrier, if you are doing a deceleration to a vertical landing, you must keep your nose pointed into the relative wind. If you don’t, it’s possible to get too much wind/lift under one wing that causes the aircraft to roll inverted uncontrollably. An inverted rocket ride into the ground from 50′ is not a pretty way to die.
‘Harriers have a wind vane on the nose that literally points into the relative wind. “Keep the vane centered” is a life-death mantra doing decelerations.
‘Most of the time, you simply decel into the wind so it’s not a big deal.
‘But let’s say you can’t approach the landing spot nose-into-the-wind. Let’s say your decel line is 45d off the wind, with wind coming from your left.
‘At 100kts, the relative wind is in your face because your forward speed through the air mass is the largest component of the relative wind.
‘But as you slow down, the crosswind component of the relative wind gets bigger. You’ll see your wind vane start pointing left into the relative wind.
‘So, you kick in some rudder to keep the nose/wind vane pointed into the wind. As you continue to slow down, you’ll be kicking in more rudder to keep the nose pointed. As you approach the landing spot, you’re flying sideways to the right with your nose pointed to the left. You stop the airplane over the spot by lifting that right wing and dropping your nose a bit.
Max NATOPS sideways speed
‘Max NATOPS sideways speed is 30kts. That’s pretty fast.
‘If it’s a hot day, you’re doing all of this with an engine working in the top few percent of its performance, and when your engine water starts flowing, you’ve got 90 seconds to get the airplane on the ground.
‘All that is prelude to decelerating down the Cubi 25 runway as the front passes. Short version is that the wind shifted 180 as I approached the runway. I found myself doing a 180d turn in the deceleration to the landing. I was flying sideways and then backwards at +30kts trying to keep the wind vane centered.
‘Uncomfortable as sh*t. The whole time. I thought, “It’s going to look really bad if I have to eject in front of everyone. The skipper is going to be really pissed and I’ll get a shitty call-sign.”’
Bowen concludes;
‘With the nose pointed the wrong way down the runway. I got the airplane stopped by pushing my nose down, I got it on the runway just as the water ran out.
‘I did the approach to runway 25 and landed facing 07.
‘Not scared. Just really flipping uncomfortable.’
Photo by Lance Cpl. Graham J. Benson and Marine Assault Training Squadron (VMAT) 203 / U.S. Marine Corps