Demise of the Harrier

Piece here about 2010 and canning the Harrier....

The Inside Story Of How The UK Culled Its Entire Harrier Jet Force In Just Two Months

Retired RAF Harrier chief recalls how painful decision-making resulted in the abrupt end of an icon before its time.

www.thedrive.com

 

[Tin basher]

To the non-harrier initiated what does RSS CAT 3 mean?

RSS - Repair and Salvage Squadron ( Crash & Smash in old money)

Cat 3 - Category 3 large repairs usually carried out by a specialist RSS team that is not part of the squadrons normal manpower.

Cat 3 one of five categories of repair. Cat 1 tiny job i.e. simple anchor nut change, Cat 5 Beyond economical repair (BER) totally fecked bring a shovel

 

[Rugby-Jock-Lad]

Cheers!!

 

[Spearmint]

Every

Every Harrier was RSS CAT 3? That's quite a bold statement.

To be fair to ILLKC, at the time of their demise I had already spent a good few years on Heavy Rects with more and more frames coming through with OOL cracked inter-nozzle fairings the closer we got to their demise.

I hated the Harrier decision as much as anyone else but we just didn't have the numbers as Afghan broke them. They were fucked.

When Tonka took over in that hot sandy place it was taking longer and longer for us to wait for spares to come in. Obviously funding was getting diverted to other priorities. We couldn't even get a GTS from the Bay for love nor money.

 

[Talk Wrench]

To be fair to ILLKC, at the time of their demise I had already spent a good few years on Heavy Rects with more and more frames coming through with OOL cracked inter-nozzle fairings the closer we got to their demise.

I hated the Harrier decision as much as anyone else but we just didn't have the numbers as Afghan broke them. They were fucked.

That wasn't a sleight on ILLKC, I was genuinely surprised by that statement. I'm speaking as someone who worked on 3 (eng) although granted, it was before things got well and truly sandy.

 

[I Look Like Kevin Costner]

To be fair to ILLKC, at the time of their demise I had already spent a good few years on Heavy Rects with more and more frames coming through with OOL cracked inter-nozzle fairings the closer we got to their demise.

I hated the Harrier decision as much as anyone else but we just didn't have the numbers as Afghan broke them. They were fucked.

When Tonka took over in that hot sandy place it was taking longer and longer for us to wait for spares to come in. Obviously funding was getting diverted to other priorities. We couldn't even get a GTS from the Bay for love nor money.

I was doing catergory 3 repairs on the skins behind the hot nozzles on GR5s in 1991. Whole skin changes as they were not man enough. On airframes that had only 200 hours on them! The Harrier design was always intensive on the structural repair side for several reasons. Hot gases from RCS control nozzles put hot air on extreme areas that were designed for land ops. Carrier added salt to the equation. Engine and engine exhausts in the middle of the airframe added acoustic and thermal stresses (Regardless of the shielding) that is not great for alloy structures. I worked in the structures bay at HMF in 2003 so saw the state things were becoming. That was as Gulf War 2 was happening and Afghan had not started. I had met the heap than cannot be named by then mind!

 

[Talk Wrench]

I had met the heap than cannot be named by then mind!

Shhhhhhh!

Say nothing more

I remember "extracting" all back end wiring ready for the rear skin reinforcement mods. We had a few incidents of our structural colleagues drilling out rivets, whilst at the same time introducing new circuitry to the wiring systems.

I hated the massive splices in the middle of the aircraft. Simple when building an aircraft, chaotic when trying to modify it.

 

[Spearmint]

I hated the massive splices in the middle of the aircraft. Simple when building an aircraft, chaotic when trying to modify it.

They were bloody awful things to get back into some form of shape fit to be clipped in position once you had finished troubleshooting them. Horrible design.