Another day. One day nearer Portsmouth, and of course the South Atlantic, but, more importantly, one day less of FOST, thankfully.
The exercises continue, and today, with the full air group (or at least more or less the right number of aircraft) embarked, we had a very full flying programme, starting early, and finishing late. As I type this, at 1945, waiting to go on watch at 2000, my cabin is filled with the repeated thunderous roars of returning Harriers. The Harrier, of course, takes off like a regular aircraft, albeit using the adjustable nozzles so that the available runway, at only six hundred feet in length, is long enough, but lands almost exactly like a helicopter.
The landing, as any Harrier pilot will be only too pleased to explain, is by far the trickiest manoeuvre they ever have to perform. The standard visual recovery is for the aircraft to approach the ship from astern, fly past the bow and then break left into a short circuit. Whilst flying around that circuit, the pilot drops the landing gear, which on a Harrier consists of two sets of main wheels in line with the fuselage and two outrigger wheels, one mounted at the end each wing.
He also has to reduce speed from the probably about 150 knots the aircraft was doing when it reached the ship, so that by the time he completes the circuit and comes alongside the carrier, he’s matching speed with it. This is tricky, because the ship is likely to be doing only around 25 knots, and that means that the Harrier’s wings will be generating no lift at all, and the pilot will be essentially balancing the entire weight of the aircraft on the downward thrust from the Pegasus engine, while also maintaining sufficient forward speed to manoeuvre across the deck.
To provide additional power for this, the most critical of part of the entire evolution, the pilot will at some point go ‘wet committed’, which means that a pump starts forcing water into the engine, which provides a useful increase in power, but which will only last for about ninety seconds. So from the moment he goes ’wet committed’ he has almost exactly one and a half minutes to land the aircraft.
Watching the Marshaller on the deck – usually the FDO – who will indicate which spot the aircraft is to land on, the pilot then kicks the aircraft slightly sideways to start it transitioning over the deck, but immediately has to generate thrust in the opposite direction to stop it moving too quickly and smashing into the side of the island. This would be a Bad Thing, and would result in the usual boards of enquiry, courts martial, expensive repaint jobs, new aircraft, opening a new box of pilots and all that kind of thing.
Once over the deck, and in a stable hover, the pilot reduces power momentarily to start the aircraft in descent, but then has to put the power back on again to stop it descending too quickly, because the hot exhaust gases from the jet engine hit the deck and then bounce upwards again, where they’re ingested by that same engine, resulting in a significant loss of power because the air is so hot. Jet engines, of course, work best with cold air.
And assuming he manages all that OK, the aircraft will then touch down, almost certainly bounce up again because they almost always do, before settling on the spot. The pilot will immediately move the nozzles to the fully aft position and taxi away towards the side of the island as directed by the Marshaller. If he stays on the spot where he landed, there’s a good chance that the heat of the deck, which has been blasted by the exhaust from the Pegasus engine, will start to melt his tyres.
It’s not that easy an evolution for even an experienced pilot, and there have been a number of cases where pilots have managed to cope with almost every other aspect of flying the Harrier – and it is quite a high workload aircraft – but have never been able to crack the vertical landing on a tiny lump of steel bouncing around in the ocean.
That’s the visual landing, but in fact the CCA – the Carrier Controlled Approach – is remarkably similar, except that the aircraft won’t normally do a circuit but will begin reducing speed when it’s within the last mile or so and visual with the ship, and will then come to a hover alongside before landing in the same way.
The power required to keep the aircraft almost stationary is enormous, and the noise produced by the engine is quite deafening, though of fairly short duration. My cabin on 2 deck, as a matter of interest, is directly below the Flight Deck …
An interesting exchange of signals:
In manuscript by the CommCen (Communications Centre):
TOD: 2025Z
TOTE: 900
PP RBDFNU RBDNHC RBDNHCF RBDNPA
DE RBDFOWA 057 2001904
ZNY RRRRR
P R 191900Z JUL 82
FM HMS ILLUSTRIOUS
TO RBDFNU/HMS HERMES
INFO RBDNHC/FOST
RBDNHCF/HMS BRAZEN
RBDNPA/HMS TORQUAY
BT
R E S T R I C T E D
SIC LAQ/Z31
MANY CONGRATULATIONS AND WELCOME HOME
UNDERSTAND YOU WILL TRANSIT BRAVO CENTRAL 2 AND CHARLIE CENTRAL 2 FROM 1500-1600A TOMORROW TUESDAY
REQUEST PERMISSION TO STEAM PAST YOU
BT
In manuscript by the CommCen (Communications Centre):
RELO: – CAPT. J C K SLATER RN
DIST: – ADM OPS NAV ENG SEC AIR MSO MET
OUT NO TOD 2025 S/S GS 19.7.82
And the reply HMS Hermes sent to Illustrious was:
PP RBDNHCF
DE RBDFNU 036 2002129
ZNY RRRRR
P R 192115Z JUL 82
FM HMS HERMES
TO RBDNHCF/HMS ILLUSTRIOUS
INFO RBDNHC/FOST
RBDNHCF/HMS BRAZEN
RBDNHCF/HMS TORQUAY
BT
R E S T R I C T E D
SIC LAQ/Z31
YOUR 191900Z JUL 82
I AM NOT LOOKING MY BEST BUT WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO SEE YOU. IF YOU CAN CATCH ME
BT
In manuscript by the CommCen (Communications Centre):
DIST: – ADM OPS NAVENG SEC AIR AUTO
ACT: – ADM SEC
TOR: 2245 IN B417 GS 19.7.82
All of which, in simple English, meant that Hermes would be passing close by tomorrow, and we would do a steam past with her.