Harriers make final Ark Royal take-off
nicensleazy
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Personally, I find it hard to get nostalgic about what are essentially killing machines. But from a design and imagination point of view, the Harrier was an invention of pure genius. And it needed investment and adequate R&D, to survive.
And now, like that other British H, the Hovercraft, the Harrier gets filed under History.0 -
deptfordmarmoset wrote:Personally, I find it hard to get nostalgic about what are essentially killing machines. But from a design and imagination point of view, the Harrier was an invention of pure genius. And it needed investment and adequate R&D, to survive.
And now, like that other British H, the Hovercraft, the Harrier gets filed under History.
Yes this was my thinking too, I appreciated it for it's engineering brilliance, in the way concorde was / is. The fact that it is a killing machine does indeed detract from its beauty.0 -
Apparently the Ark Royal has been bought by a consortium of Somali pirates. As they paid cash up front and didn't haggle the MOD let them have a few Harriers as well
. Life is like a roll of toilet paper; long and useful, but always ends at the wrong moment. Anon.
Think how stupid the average person is.......
half of them are even more stupid than you first thought.0 -
deptfordmarmoset wrote:Personally, I find it hard to get nostalgic about what are essentially killing machines. But from a design and imagination point of view, the Harrier was an invention of pure genius. And it needed investment and adequate R&D, to survive.
And now, like that other British H, the Hovercraft, the Harrier gets filed under History.
How is the hovercraft filed under History? Still in regular use today in both the civilian and military world!0 -
Ollieda wrote:deptfordmarmoset wrote:Personally, I find it hard to get nostalgic about what are essentially killing machines. But from a design and imagination point of view, the Harrier was an invention of pure genius. And it needed investment and adequate R&D, to survive.
And now, like that other British H, the Hovercraft, the Harrier gets filed under History.
How is the hovercraft filed under History? Still in regular use today in both the civilian and military world!
True, but not on anything like the scale it was or was hoped to be when the design first gained popularity. I saw a piece on the local news the other day about the hovercraft from Dover (which I travelled on regularly) and that at one point they were hoping to go over the atlantic on a hovercraft!"I have a lovely photo of a Camargue horse but will not post it now" (Frenchfighter - July 2013)0 -
Ollieda wrote:deptfordmarmoset wrote:Personally, I find it hard to get nostalgic about what are essentially killing machines. But from a design and imagination point of view, the Harrier was an invention of pure genius. And it needed investment and adequate R&D, to survive.
And now, like that other British H, the Hovercraft, the Harrier gets filed under History.
How is the hovercraft filed under History? Still in regular use today in both the civilian and military world!
Apart from Portsmouth - Isle of Wight, are there any other civilian hovercraft in use in the UK? I realise that the US military have taken up the hovercraft (and I think they've also tried to update the basic Harrier concept) but it feels, from a UK perspective, as though the baton has been passed on to the other side of the Atlantic.0 -
The hovercraft is still used in minature form for recreational use. It is severely unsuitable for use in rough seas so its possible uses for passengers are limited.
The Harrier is only a killing machine when loaded up, it is a superb piece of engineering and aircraft first and foremost. It's amazing how long it has been around and how no-one else has managed to design a more modern VTOL plane in the intervening years. You would think a jet that can take off and land pretty much anywhere on land or sea would be a must have for any nation and there must also be scope for such a system in non-military circles?0 -
Being ex royal navy I find it particulary sad. More worryingly though is the sate of the navy full stop.Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel0
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The Harrier is not quite as English as you think. The invention was French and the French did fly a Mirage VTOL that was faster and prettier than the Harrier but a bit more dangerous. One aircraft managed to kill two test pilots on different occasions.
http://www.aviationearth.com/aircraftdata/mirage.html0 -
MichaelW wrote:The Harrier is not quite as English as you think. The invention was French and the French did fly a Mirage VTOL that was faster and prettier than the Harrier but a bit more dangerous. One aircraft managed to kill two test pilots on different occasions.
http://www.aviationearth.com/aircraftdata/mirage.html
Ah, thanks for that link. I didn't know that it was Michel Wibault who came up with the basic design.0 -
I counted them all out
but none of them came backOrganising the Bradford Kids Saturday Bike Club at the Richard Dunn Sports Centre since 1998
http://www.facebook.com/groups/eastbradfordcyclingclub/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/eastbradfordcyclingclub/0 -
Check out the Mexican cabin crew story down the right hand side.should of used giantorangecannon0
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It is sad, but also agree, hard to get to nostalgic about killing machines. I knew someone who crashed a Harrier in the early 80s, very luck the ejector seat had been invented. I went to primary school at the end of Biggin HIll airport, well in a school that happened to be there, they had an air show there every year, probably still do. Some of my earliest memories are of a Vulcan bomber flying in low over the school for the show. Now there was a machine! I can remember not only the size of the thing, or the noise that made your lungs vibrate, but also the smell of partially burnt kerosene as an oily black fog descended on the playing fields. To an 8 year old It made you think the empire was still invincible seeing those things flying about. I felt personally let down when they couldn’t hit the runway at Port Stanley airport a few years later.0
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A lot of the planets most fascinating animals, big cats, sharks etc are also 'killing machines. It doesnt make them any less beautiful!
Would it be a fairly safe assumption that most of the people here saying that its role detracts from its beauty have never served for their country?0 -
softlad wrote:Term1te wrote:I felt personally let down when they couldn’t hit the runway at Port Stanley airport a few years later.
blame the crew - not the aircraft....
No but one of these did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2g1jpfzLIbagpuss0 -
Where would bicycles be without the contribution from the military? Aluminium alloys, carbon fibre and titanium alloys were all developed and proven on warplanes and missiles, and steel was developed as a superior material for spearpoints and blades back in the iron age.billysan wrote:A lot of the planets most fascinating animals, big cats, sharks etc are also 'killing machines. It doesnt make them any less beautiful!
...0 -
bagpusscp wrote:No but one of these did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2g1jpfzLI
The Vulcan missed the runway completely. The recce shots of craters on the runway at Port Stanley was actually mounds of earth put there by the Argentinians - classic deception.
Ironically, bombing the runway was tactically pointless anyway, as it was too short to support fast jet activity....0 -
snailracer wrote:
Where would bicycles be without the contribution from the military? Aluminium alloys, carbon fibre and titanium alloys were all developed and proven on warplanes and missiles, and steel was developed as a superior material for spearpoints and blades back in the iron age.billysan wrote:A lot of the planets most fascinating animals, big cats, sharks etc are also 'killing machines. It doesnt make them any less beautiful!
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While we're on the subject of flying and technological development, this fascinating and slightly insect-like little machine that I came across this morning got me thinking about the spin-off argument.
http://www.technikspass.de/aggressive-m ... tor-flight
I found myself thinking about what was driving the innovation here. Each ''aggressive'' manoeuvre that the quadrotor performs is as defensive as it is aggressive, yet it's clearly targeted at military use so the aggressive side gets foregrounded.
The research is university-based (Uni of Philadelphia) and not directly arising from the military - though I suspect much of the research funding comes out of Uncle Sam's war chest.
Whichever, the innovation does not, in my eyes, ''come from'' the military, it's more a case of the military R and D budget driving the university-based research. I also get the impression that any civilian use that may come as a spin-off would be also regarded as being somehow thanks to the military. But the ingenuity is not military per se - it's human - neither is the funding military per se (because where does the military get its war chest from?). The ingenuity seems simply to have been co-opted by the military.
As for the earlier comment about the beauty of big cats and sharks, sure they're beautiful things, but setting them loose on humans is going to be very, very messy - the outcome of that is going to be far from beautiful or ethical.0 -
NIce videos of the Vulcan, possibly the loudest thing in the universe at full throttle nose up...an anachronism and totally pointless in todays' (currently) nuclear cold war threat free world.0
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softlad wrote:bagpusscp wrote:No but one of these did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2g1jpfzLI
The Vulcan missed the runway completely. The recce shots of craters on the runway at Port Stanley was actually mounds of earth put there by the Argentinians - classic deception.
Ironically, bombing the runway was tactically pointless anyway, as it was too short to support fast jet activity....
Source?0 -
What about the Spitfire? To me, the fact that it was a killing machine has never detracted from it's beauty.The fact that it is a killing machine does indeed detract from its beauty.0 -
dodgy wrote:softlad wrote:bagpusscp wrote:No but one of these did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2g1jpfzLI
The Vulcan missed the runway completely. The recce shots of craters on the runway at Port Stanley was actually mounds of earth put there by the Argentinians - classic deception.
Ironically, bombing the runway was tactically pointless anyway, as it was too short to support fast jet activity....
Source?
The whiskey and sage with the pheasant looks good to me
http://www.falklandarms.co.uk/docs/falkland-arms.pdf0 -
I wasn't there (and neither were you, if you only have 17 years), so I can't honestly tell you if it's true or not. But I've heard that story (and others like it) a few times from some of those that were.
The story may well be as accurate as others like BAe's claimed klll rate for Rapier - who knows.....next you'll be telling me you were in the RAF Regt.... 0 -
How do you work out I wasn't there?
As it happens I wasn't, but I didn't give you enough information to work it out.0 -
dodgy wrote:How do you work out I wasn't there?
As it happens I wasn't, but I didn't give you enough information to work it out.
Yes you did - if you had been, you probably would have mentioned it in the earlier post. But you're right, it was only an assumption.
There was an awful lot of equipment that didn't do it's job down there. The Vulcan story may or may not be true, but given the amount of 'claimed v actual' which came to light in the wash-up, it wouldn't suprise me if they missed the Islands completely - let alone the runway...0
