Harrier crash landing

Have you all seen this?
Oooops! Appears he got between 'flying' a normal approach and flare and a 'hover' short landing. If I recall, you do a slow approach with 60 deg. nozzle. Up and down is mostly power. Pitch just sets landing attitude. (I ran flight control gain tests for carrier approaches in the AV-8B simulators at McAir/St. Louis. Much more stable than the early A models.) He was certainly faster than that...but maybe not fast enough?

Kandahar, Afghanistan.
YouTube - Harrier crash in Kandahar, Afghanistan HQ
 
Doesn't look like a standard approach to me for a Harrier landing at KAF, but since someone had the camera trained on him perhaps he had already called in an emergency. Having worked there and in the area for 1.5 yrs, it gets very hot in KAF with temps in the 130's, even hotter on that god-foresaken tarmac.
 

David Morton

Lifetime Supporter
With really high ambient air temps. and more so on the runway. often it can be like flaring into a vacuum as the engine performance just stagnates. RAF Harriers use demin water to boost take off performance but I'm unsure if it can be used for landing as well.
Aviation Fuel - Jet Fuel Information This explains it reasonably well.
His aux doors(also known as Puffer Ducts or Suction doors) were sequentially opening as he descended the last 30 feet or so, and so clearly he was asking for power. Look at the video and you will see the doors (more like small panels really) are just beside and aft of the intakes on either side and at the point of impact they all close again. This may be a feature of the engine collapsing on its mountings or sudden lack of demand from the cockpit or more likely the inertia switches shutting everything off . The Puffer Duct doors are simply spring loaded so will automatically snap shut.
They are alwaays wide open when the Harrier is hovering.
As far as the MB seat is concerned it has some clever features and is a rocket seat
with active directional control. The biggest problem is nicknamed MDC Spatter where the explosive detonation cord built into a lead triangular pipe and moulded into the canopy above the pilots head, shatters the canopy into millions of shards of perspex type glass. Another system is called FLSC (Flexible Linear Shaped Charge ) which is also embedded in the acrylic moulding of the canopy and does exactly the same as MDC. All flying clothing including the helmets( the visors of which automatically
snap shut and tight agains an MDC guard across the top of the visors) for aeroplanes using MDC canopies have special re-inforced areas on the arms, shoulders, upper thighs, and chest. At the end of the day, this aeroplane was now of little or no value to anyone as an aeroplane and his decision to abandon was the only and correct decision. The BOI (Board of Inquiry) will publish their findings and the Pilot will have probably have already gone out of the R.A.F. now anyway.
Very lucky on the day.

Additional background - the seat used in the Harrier is the zero/zero variety and does not rely on forward speed or altitude - hence the need to destroy the canopy before the pilot on his seat is driven upward through the canopy during the rocket phase of the ejection .
 
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My eyes were pinned on his silhouette through the canopy and I remember thinking "Wow - he's still in there... going along for the ride." Then the flames reached far enough forward to blow up next to and probably over the canopy and BAM - he ejected. So he IS human after all! :laugh:
 

David Morton

Lifetime Supporter
Of interest was the underwing stores he had. I think it may have quickened his decision to get out PDQ. He was carrying Paveway - also called LGB (Laser Guided Bomb) which may have caused the firemen to approach a lot more carefully. I think if I was driving a firetruck I would have watched it burn from about 5 miles away.
 

David Morton

Lifetime Supporter
How astute, but I don't think I actually said that.
Loads of pilots have just become surplus along with their Harriers and they are being offered None Golden Bowlers - a bit like the Nimrod Crews and very soon the Tornado crews - about 6 months pay - all leaving or have left the service. Apparently something to do with Toxic debts and banks filing for protection while staff still getting huge salaries and or bonuses caused a massive problem in our armed forces in the UK.
Surely you must have heard about it?
 

David Morton

Lifetime Supporter
Also - in Guarulhos (St Paolo) Vref+5, oat +30c and heavy rain (almost a Cb) half way down RWO9. 747-400 and it was snatched out of my hands. I brought down the rubber jungle(Pax oxy masks), the projectors (before seat back videos), and broke a passengers glasses on the bridge of his nose. I think only a Boeing could have survived it, but it never recorded it on ACARS as a heavy landing.
Mike - we only ever do it once.....
 
We've all done it. A friend of mine managed to drop the rubber jungle on RW 23R at Manchester, much to my amusement. But thats what happens when you 'arrive' before the hump.
I have had some 'arrivals' in my time, most involving RW14 in Kefalonia (a small Greek island, made famous by a particular captain and his madolin) I swear the first 200m of it are vertical!

I think my worst was at Tenerife. RW08, and at 1500ft we were in still air, the surface wind was 060/5 gusting 55. I managed a 1.32g landing in the B757, the limit being 1.3. I don't think I ever worked so hard during an approach than that day
 
O.K. Let's hear the 727 stories...and anybody who says they could land the trimotor consistently well is blowing smoke (from one who spent some 18 years in all three seats on that beauty - loved it).
I'll begin with the UAL 727-100 at Utah/SLC el. 4600' MSL, circa early 60's. Newly transitioned pilot from a DC-7C, the captain flew bug speed and at 50 ft. pulled the power to idle for a gentle flare...wrong!!! Sheared the gear and totalled the airplane. Leading edge devices? what are those? They were learning back then :eek:)
 

David Morton

Lifetime Supporter
Hi Mike,
My only experience of the 727 was the thick wing Advanced -200 version and how I nearly became the chief pilot of a 4 ship operation in 1984. We had the key people, the money, and the contracts for two ships, and AOC was just about signed with the various moneys deposited with the CAA. What happened? I got what I thought was a better offer and went off to Denmark with Maersk. They offered me a plum job in Trondheim (Norway) when my first contract finished but I decided against Norway for family reasons and came back to Monarch for the most plum job I ever had in my life only flying the 737.200 during the summers, but getting paid for the whole year, meaning I could fly the DHC-6 in the winter. So much fun. It all kicked off because of the 727 project and although I did the conversion course with Dan Air and the 1179 with them as well, that was as far as I got on the three jet.
 
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