SIMON TURNER
With a combination of good fortune and a natural ability to avoid promotion above the rank of squadron leader, I managed to achieve a career full of variety and some fabulously operational flying with an unbroken fourteen years on the jet of choice. My career straddled GR3 to GR7 and included most of the GR3 highlights, like Belize, Norway, OLF, Option Zulu, the Field, Deci for APC and ACMI. Thereafter, it was the transition to GR5, with all its frustrations, teething problems and operational limitations, into an exchange tour flying the AV-8B with the USMC at Yuma before the GR7 at Wittering with 1(F) and 20(R) Squadrons. I was lucky enough to gain extensive exposure to all of these Harrier types, with good continuity whilst in positions of operational significance to either my squadron or the force.
GR3 ops can be summarised as being extensively about Cold War tactics, essentially two dimensional with everything happening at low level. Weapons were relatively imprecise and employed the shotgun principle using multiple warheads to hit the target, mostly in the forward edge of the battle area. Most weapons were employed at relatively close range to the target, thus reducing the time of flight of the weapon and therefore minimising the miss distance associated with aiming errors. The results achieved during GR3 weapons training were mostly good, despite the limited capabilities of the aiming system and weapons in use. But there was no doubting that the operation was very dynamic and intense in nature. For example, my first tour of 4½ years with IV(AC) Squadron yielded 991 flight hours (excluding OCU flying) and 1,243 flights. Pilots could expect to be well qualified by the end of their first tour, unlike the later Harrier days. For me it was FRI, ACI, QWI, Zulu Leader and a whole bunch of routine quals like fours lead, aggressor, ACL etc.
The trademarks of GR3 ops were field operations and multi-aircraft formations like Option Zulu. I flew twenty-six flights in five days on my second field deployment. With this kind of continuity the aircraft becomes another limb, everything is at your fingertips and the cockpit feels like home, comfortable and familiar. Flying the max of six flights per day left the aircraft available for another three waves thereafter, the jets were reliable, the engineering extremely efficient and the responsibility was as huge as the rewards. Field peculiarities included no radio transmissions so no ATC, always a plus. The threat from Soviet jamming equipment was such that they could locate and jam a frequency after a two-second transmission. So we checked out to every operational frequency to avoid being jammed until we had at least managed to make urgent operational calls, such as missile breaks, before checking out or auto chopping to the next frequency. The net result was that we flew most of our missions from the field without making a single radio transmission. This included large multi-aircraft formations, which made the formation rendezvous interesting when we consider that formation members may have launched from different sites having received a briefing, second hand via secure telephone and telebrief. We avoided becoming too wrapped up in the complexity and dynamism of field ops to the detriment of real operational capability. The job of attacking targets, either with a camera or a weapon, was always the primary focus. I saw examples where a complex operation associated with the take-off and landing phase would lead the operation to become focused on that part of the mission at the expense of the main task.
The USN was a classic example; whilst on exchange in the US I thought they often became so concerned about their performance on and around the ship that they spent too little time analysing and honing their operational skills in the target area. I once had to debrief a team of F-14 pilots on why it was inappropriate to plan and execute CAS using 500,000:1 scale maps that simply don’t provide enough detail to plot targets and friendlies that might be as close as 200 metres apart. F-14s doing CAS – what do you expect? With the HF it was all about the target and whether or not you survived any pre-target engagements to see if the tasking had been satisfied, and post-target engagements to see if you lived to fight another day. Notwithstanding the GR3 limitation of post-flight video being around ninety seconds long, this scrutiny fostered enormous attention to detail in all aspects of the mission and was a very effective learning process. I saw a contrast in the USMC’s approach; a debrief was far less detailed and analytical of the finesse of an attack, perhaps down to the mindset of operating in a permissive environment with the expectation of air supremacy and the availability of truly enormous amounts of firepower. I witnessed this on a firepower demo at the 29 Palms desert ranges when tasked to lead an eight-ship to a target, with wall-to-wall firebombs. It promised to be a good show but we were only a small part, as I found later. We were to follow a ten-minute barrage of M270 multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) that was due to end one minute before our TOT. Running in at low level, this barrage looked impressive and quite scary, with nothing but dust and explosions in front of us. We had given ourselves a line feature that marked our escape point if rockets had not ceased impacting the target area. The last rockets landed what seemed like a nano-second before the line so we pressed on. There was nothing left of the target other than dust, scattered tyres and scorched holes. We dropped on time but on this random array of mythical targets and our ninety-second fire storm seemed utterly insignificant when compared with the MLRS barrage.
The recce role was mastered on IV(AC) Squadron with its own RIC and recce pods in abundance. Each day started with a met brief and recce training with an ‘around the room’ test of your ability to recognise some seriously well camouflaged, very distant and often poor quality imagery of friend or foe military equipment. These were often tense moments. The last thing you wanted was the embarrassment of misidentifying friend for foe or simply getting the wrong answer in front of the massed squadron pilots. This serious approach prevailed but the occasional slide would enter the test as a set up to catch someone off their guard. OC IV was once framed by the FRI with his turn to identify the distant vehicle in a tree line. The boss had a brave guess, it was wrong and the next pilot got it right. We moved on, and so this continued with the boss failing to get any right during that session. It was eventually revealed that the boss had been looking at slides of empty fields with no military equipment in shot.
To RAFG Harrier pilots, Option Zulu was a significant event. It would define day one of a central european conflict and meant that Soviet forces had crossed the Inner German border and WWIII had begun. The mission entailed the massed ranks of RAFG Harriers launching from either field sites or Gütersloh to attack the first rank of Soviet tanks in the geographic choke points of the border area. Once again, not a single radio call would be made throughout the whole mission. I recall the then Flight Lieutenant (later Air Marshal) Dave Walker issuing a massive bollocking to some poor 3 Squadron JP for breaking radio silence, perhaps for some trivial matter such as a bird strike, such was the intensity of the mindset of the day. There could be few sights as pleasing as a sky full of Harriers following you to a target area as each pair crested the Bielefeld ridge en route to the Zulu target area; it brings a smile to my face just writing about it.
Most training was of similarly high intensity and focused on the anticipated task within the operational theatre. It was often difficult to differentiate between air combat and low-level evasion, other than the extra dimension, use of the vertical. Evasion could be very dynamic and was seldom limited to the manoeuvres defined by the letter of the law. On an early combat-ready work-up flight my four-ship was bounced on recovery to base. Whilst talking to approach control and joining up, this jet popped out of the weeds doing 480 kts just north-west of the field and started turning and burning with us. It was Martin ‘Cliffy’ Cliff setting the scene for the years to come.
During a squadron exchange to Colmar we were tasked to fly eight Harriers with six Mirage III and V aircraft mud-moving against a four-ship CAP of Mirage 2000, which was a very advanced threat for its day. We had little or no information of its capabilities but knew it had an all-aspect and BVR capability when we only had stern hemisphere heat-seeking missiles. The French CO was leading the mission and Tim Ellison and I were JPs with few qualifications; we were certainly not aggressor qualified nor ACLs. During the brief the French CO picked Tim and me to run a sweep five minutes ahead of the main package of mud movers, to find and harass the Mirage 2000s. As OCU course mates and good friends, we shared a glance which said ‘this won’t happen’ expecting our boss, Pete Harris, to step in and nominate a better qualified pair. He didn’t and we flew the brief and had a hoot. With an early tally on a pair of Mirage 2000s, we managed to evade their radar and jumped them unsighted. Just as we were calling the first two shots we gained a tally on the second pair closing into our eight o’clock; despite thinking we were about to be shot if not already hit, we continued manoeuvring, switched and gained advantage to get two guns kills on them. It was only at the debrief that we learned that the Mirage 2000 crews had not claimed a single shot against any Harrier all day. For the first time in my life I felt ten foot tall and so proud to be a Harrier pilot.
There were many moments like this with the Harrier, and especially the least capable of all marks, the GR3, when we managed to achieve better operational results than the aircraft should have been capable of. Fighting F-15s in Deci, we should never have got close to any shots against them but we did, and many times. We used the mythology of Harrier peculiarities such as VIFF. We warned any adversary fighter in training to take great care when closing from behind as VIFF could generate enormous closure rates without plan-form change; this was always over exaggerated to gain a psychological advantage when in reality VIFF was pretty much a last-ditch option due to the enormous loss of speed that followed, a big disadvantage in an air combat environment where ‘speed is life’. The best of these exaggerations for effect came from Paul Warren-Wilson (Wibs) who surprised us all in a dissimilar air combat brief with our F-15 adversaries in Deci by warning them to take care when looking towards a Harrier as we might be using the laser to assess range and obviously this could be very hazardous to their vision. They bought it, and he was so convincing that some of us were left wondering if we were missing a trick.
Flying the GR3 in RAFG was a great place to learn the mud-moving trade and consolidate all aspects of VSTOL, navigation and situational awareness, skills that were to become second nature and superb tools for flying the next generation Harrier. It was an uncanny coincidence that the GR5 entered RAF service as the ‘Wall’ came down and things began hotting up in Iraq. Around this time I returned from Germany and joined 1(F) Squadron for a relatively short tour. Although we continued to train at low level for the worst-case scenario of UK-only operations or bad weather, partly because that’s all we knew and partly because, as a nation, we could not rely on our conflicts always being within a NATO coalition, another Falklands for example. When Gulf War 1 kicked off the GR5 was deemed non-operational due its lack of weapons clearances, despite the fact that the USMC had a very extensive inventory of weapons that they used to great effect in the ‘kill zones’ over Kuwait and Iraq. So effective were their attacks that Major Gen Norman Schwarzkopf named the Harrier in his top ten weapons systems of the war, one of only two aircraft to make the list. A later USAF statistic revealed that 83% of all of its aircraft shot down from the Korean War to the end of Gulf War 1 were lost to small-arms fire. So they operated above this threat and invested in equipment to neutralise the SAM threats present when operating at altitude. High-level attacks also suited the Harrier II’s kit, with its angle rate bombing system (ARBS) and its dual mode tracker (DMT). This suite enabled the USMC pilots (and DAK) to loiter covertly at altitude, with no noise or visual signature on the ground, waiting to identify targets, using the DMT to give a six-times magnified image, then contrast or laser track the target before commanding an automatic weapon release. Most Iraqi tanks were in sandy bunds to protect from attack by coalition tanks with their longer range guns and higher speed capability. From the air, this set-up provided good contrast with shadows and easy acquisition from above. The DMT would lock every time and accurate aiming could be easily achieved; the system could deliver 6mR accuracy in this type of attack – more accurate than the F-18 conducting a radar attack from the same profile.
I missed some of the frustrations of the RAF changeover when on my exchange tour with the USMC at Yuma flying the AV-8B, a similar beast to the GR7, but some having the big engine with an extra 1,500-lb of thrust, an enormous inventory of weapons, 100% LERX and a fully-developed night-attack capability. There were also many subtle differences between this aircraft and the GR7, mainly the avionics, a completely different range of ancillary equipment, better performance due to the lighter airframe (the additional bird-strike protection of the GR5 was not fitted and nor were the outrigger pylons or the ZEUS EW suite). I learned a great deal in just over two years with two different USMC squadrons flying a mix of day and night-attack missions. I dropped easily 100 times more weapons than I had dropped in my whole RAF career and flew to and from a variety of USN ships. The tour had proved to be a great way to prepare for my return to the new GR7 force and participating in ops in the northern Iraq no-fly zone.
On return from the US, I briefly joined 1(F) Squadron again and had a great time gaining CR status, flying in the northern Iraq no-fly zone and gaining night-attack (EO) CR before moving to the job of my career, that of OC A Flight on the Harrier OCU (20 Squadron). As a QWI, this was the best tour I could have hoped for. With its QWI STANEVAL post within my terms of reference, I inherited interesting responsibilities at a time when the HF was reaching maturity with night attack and a variety of weapons clearances coming our way. The RAF had changed the way weapons clearances were issued and the OEU had become a tool to streamline and speed up the process of improving operational capability. Towards the end of the GR5, all later converted to GR7, we had clearances for recce with a variety of high or low-level recce pods, and we could extend the range and endurance of the aircraft with the approval of a four-tank fit and an AAR capability. AAR was far easier to perform on the GR5/7 due to the retractable probe, which presented reduced drag and far fewer handling issues than the GR3 when fitted with a probe. Most GR3 pilots had flown with recce pods and were very competent with recce procedures, but the GR5 with its variety of pods presented slightly different challenges when operated from medium altitudes. Unlike the low-level recce pod with its array of five cameras providing horizon-to-horizon coverage, the field of view of the LOROP pod, with its single long-range oblique camera, was more limited. It required very accurate flight parameters, especially with the track and angle of bank of the aircraft, to ensure the target appeared within the camera’s field of view (FOV) when operated from typical slant ranges of up to 20,000 ft or more. A few degrees of bank angle could change the swathe of coverage over the ground and create a target miss.
I was once tasked to lead eight GR7s to gather imagery of Mosul airfield in northern Iraq. Most of the aircraft had LOROPs and all had centreline recce pods as back-up options, despite these being of limited use from medium altitude. The ROE limited ops to above 5,000 ft in some areas within the AOR due to the small-arms threat, which was ever present. I had briefed the attack with routing west to east running south of Mosul with LOROP pods looking north to the airfield. We all had different tracks in order to gather differing views of the target area. However, on arriving in the AOR it was obvious that a thunderstorm, the only storm around, had inconveniently positioned itself on our track, preventing a medium altitude line of sight to the target. Using our frequency agile radios, and exercising Harrier Force flexibility, we re-briefed the attack to make the same run at low level using our low-level pod, running all five cameras. We mitigated the small-arms threat by running in a wall of eight jets, line abreast with about 4,000 ft lateral spacing between aircraft. This helped ensure that lead elements didn’t alert ground threats to the presence of followers, with all aircraft ingressing and egressing the target area simultaneously. I called buster, meaning we all set full power to run as fast as possible, and began running the cameras at the airfield boundary. We were in and out of the target area within fifteen seconds and pulled out of low level when clear of the storm. The procedure after landing was to give a verbal MISREP, a mission report, before heading to the RIC to run through individual films with the PI (photographic interpreter). Entering the RIC it was quickly apparent that something exciting had happened. My first thought was that we were in trouble for operating at low level in this area. Fortunately, it was the imagery that created excitement. Our pictures, taken from quite low level, had revealed items of vital intelligence within one of the hangars on the airfield. The hangar doors were open and a nice oblique view from a typical operational low level revealed the contents of the hangar as being two rows of FROG 7 transporter erector launchers. These were tactical ballistic missiles and capable of delivering nuclear, biological or chemical warheads; surely this was evidence of WMD. The excitement in the RIC was tangible and the pictures were allegedly beamed to the Pentagon within 30 minutes. Fortunately, nobody seemed to care about our deviation to low level after this.
By now medium-level tactics were maturing, although some of our attacks were executed using the ‘force’, a mystical sixth sense that came with experience, maturity and luck – or simply bravado. We benefited from our USMC exchange experiences and input from other sources such as the OEU before we achieved a fully mature set of medium-level procedures. It was a few years after the GR7 introduction before we perfected the art, whereby we could achieve release solutions at a required height and dive angle without too much difficulty. We were able to run formations through such dynamic three-dimensional attacks without losing each other and to maintain mutual support. In the good old GR3 days mud-moving packages went alone and unafraid with no supporting air assets. With GR5/7/9 operations in the various theatres there were numerous supporting assets from escort and sweep fighters, CAPs and SEAD assets, AWACs etc. Air pictures were passed in various ways, giving the God’s eye view of the battle space. We were very much choreographed into the air order of battle to extend mutual support beyond the wingman and into the big picture with other assets all synchronised to support our efforts. Comms were much more complex and a well developed set of coalition SOPs provided code words for critical events to achieve the mission objective whilst preventing blue on blue (fratricide).
The basic GR3 skills that still prevailed within the HF differentiated us from other air forces. For example when a pair from 4 Squadron operating in Bosnia were targeted by a SAM launch, the missile was sighted by the wingman and the missile break was called over the radio; the targeted jet manoeuvred and simultaneously deployed IR flares and defeated the missile. The pair continued with their mission; another day at the office. The wingman that called the break was an excellent USMC exchange pilot, who admitted that the reality and intensity of our training had prepared him for operations.
I recall my first mission in the Iraq no-fly zone with another eight-ship. We were required to conduct a simulated attack, but carrying live bombs, against a SA-6 site NW of Mosul. We planned a 30° dive attack with all aircraft deploying flares in the pull off target. Within the formation three of us were on our first mission in theatre and the adrenalin was flowing. The more junior of the first timers was at the rear of the formation and required to rendezvous with the number seven off target. A relatively simple process at low level, but at medium level following a dynamic attack with significant vertical manoeuvring, especially in a very bright blue Iraqi sky, it proved too much for him. He was split from the formation for the next ten minutes, he lost situational awareness and mutual support in the excitement of facing a real live SA-6 threat at close quarters. The debrief took a while.
With the force-wide commitment to becoming night EO capable, the HF became the stuff of legend. It was exciting and motivating to do the routine things we did in the Harrier, but to then take these disciplines, skills and capabilities into the darkness and perform with equal success was simply incredible. Night attack brought a very advanced capability to the HF, one that no other force had, at that stage, perfected to the same high standard. Operating at low level using FLIR and NVG imagery was empowering. Entering the night low-flying system we were allowed to turn off all external lights and become totally invisible, while any potential adversary on CAP could be seen easily through the NVGs. We made a habit of sneaking up on such CAPs and dispensing with the threat before heading to our target. Of course there were difficulties and many hazards associated with flying on artificial imagery produced by these sensors, but these could be mitigated with training and robust procedures.
There were a few scares, such as one wingman losing sight of his leader from a fighting wing position at low level; by the time visual contact had been regained the wingman had somehow overtaken the leader and crossed to the other side. Neither pilot saw the other until the new positions had been established. We learned from such events and created procedures to prevent recurrences so accidents from similar situations were avoided. We even introduced night EO operations into the OCU syllabus for ab initio students. There is no doubt though, by this stage the HF had become quite a safe place to fly. With the GR5/7 the accident rate had fallen significantly when compared with the days of the GR3. In my view, the main reasons for this were the improvements made to the handling qualities of the AV-8B variants, the reduced dynamism of the operation after the demise of the Soviet Union but also the introduction of probably the best training tool available to the force. With the GR5 and beyond came video capable of providing good quality HUD imagery6 for all or most of the mission. This allowed for a great deal more scrutiny of a pilot’s performance and certainly improved capabilities across the force. It became the norm for a very high degree of scrutiny of HUD video to follow each flight. This became glaringly obvious during our first combined QWI course Op Phase with the Tornado OCU. By comparison, the Tornado QWIs would spend far less time scrutinising their HUD video post-flight than we did. Our way may have been seen as oppressive to outsiders, but the whole emphasis was to improve and learn, and as a force we embraced this ethos.
For me, it was great to see fewer accidents and retain my friends and fellow GR5/7 pilots. The GR3 days were very exciting and perhaps more dynamic in some respects but there was a mindset that an accident is inevitable and you wondered who would be next. I saw this clearly on 4 Squadron where all of our new GR3 pilots were invited to become members of an insurance consortium. The aim was to ensure that any deceased pilot would have others to pay for and organise the wake, pay for the funeral and cater for the family’s immediate well-being if the worst should happen. Sinister perhaps, but none of us seemed perturbed by this possibility and we all signed up. Although I recall a tangible sense of relief, some surprise and enormous celebration when my good friend and course mate, Marc ‘Rambo’ Frith, landed and climbed out of his GR3 for the last time. “I survived,” he exclaimed in a manner that clearly indicated his expectation had been that he would not. Some, like me, got lucky in the Harrier.
From 1985 to 1998 I flew GR3, 5 and 7 and various marks of AV-8B for fourteen fantastic years. I had two scares, one when a Tornado missed me by about 20 ft when operating in a prohibited area in Germany; I was tasked to be there and he wasn’t. During a busy phase of my low-level attack, whilst talking to a FAC and lining up on the target, the proverbial hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I looked up to see a Tornado head-on at close range at the same height. Our closing speed was 900 kts, I pushed to avoid, it went darker momentarily and I heard a very loud whooshing, as it passed close above me. I made contact with him on the emergency frequency, and despite my junior rank, gave him some choice words. We spoke later on the phone and I repeated my angry rant before realising that he was a squadron leader. Thankfully, he took it and apologised. During one of my early GR5 flights, a 1v1v1 air-combat flight, in the midst of turning and burning, my engine failed to respond to the throttle position and stuck at idle power. Lots of audio and visual warnings illuminated; I was above complete cloud cover heading east away from Wittering. After steering myself away from the other aircraft around me I realised I needed to select the manual fuel system as the digital engine control (DECS) had failed and with idle power I couldn’t get back to base. The trouble was where was this switch in the GR5? My motor skills had been honed in the GR3 with the switch being in front of the throttle, whereas now in the GR5 it was behind the throttle. With the throttle at idle the switch was hidden, there was a lot going on outside, I’d just entered cloud and had a wingman carrying out a visual inspection whilst trying to contact Wittering and turn homewards and issue a Mayday. Having recently crossed from GR3 to GR5 without any simulator flying, I was struggling to find the switch I needed so elected to shut down and relight the engine to reset the DECS. Fortunately it worked, and I landed safely. During my first tour on the GR3 there were seven fatalities; I for one am very thankful that this trend didn’t continue in the HF beyond the GR3.
To be a Harrier pilot, for me, began as a dream, became a realistic possibility and by the time it happened it was engrained in my DNA. There is no cliché, sound bite or catchphrase that accurately conveys the significance of being a Harrier pilot. The old saying, ‘How do you know if there’s a pilot in the room? – He’ll tell you’. It’s not an ego thing – it’s raw enthusiasm, a desire to share the love of the profession, a need to complete the perfect mission and survive in the ridiculously dynamic battle space. The tools of the trade can be as complex as the most advanced fighter with state of the art technology, a multitude of man/ machine interface protocols and numerous sub-systems, all with varying degrees of importance when employed in the time critical context of the operational theatre. Yet we could never ignore the operational advantages gained through effective employment of the ‘back to basics’ tactics that were as relevant in the first aerial battles as they are now; using the sun, terrain, weather and remaining unpredictable with a knowledge of how the enemy will fight are all critical to our success. We must have a mind’s-eye view of the dynamic aerial battle in three dimensions, keeping pace with the positional changes that occur in ultra-quick time of not only our aircraft, but our supporting elements and especially our adversaries. Today’s airman has no spare time to ponder options, but makes numerous crucial decisions on each mission. The many advantages offered by the effective use of airpower can be achieved largely by selecting the right individuals to be your airmen and training them in the right way, then providing the right aircraft and equipment. Airmen measure their worth in terms of mission success and operational effectiveness, achieving aims and objectives and getting the job done. There is no point in ‘making holes in the sky’ for no tactical gain. Being a Harrier pilot was a state of mind, a bond to other Harrier pilots, a professional identity of monumental significance and, for me, was quite simply my greatest professional achievement.