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Harrier jump jet lands on a stool - GIF and video
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I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, NC, and we would be amazed watching the Harrier pilots doing their touch and go's putting their aircraft onto a little box spray painted on the road. I have to say that Marine is one hell of a pilot.
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Good stick, I used to work on AV8-B's, and we had something similar happen. A bird was doing touch and goes and cut a coyote in half with an outrigger gear, it shaped the pin and the outrigger was just flopping. He hovered in for a gear up landing on the belly struts. Of course this was in Yuma and not at sea. LHA's are a different story.
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Makes one think, how often does the landing gear fail that they have a ready made stool or saddle to land on? Hope the reliability is better than this would indicate.
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I've only seen one gear failure, and that was because a coyote got in the way. The gear on a Harrier is pretty robust, and the QA checks pretty intense, but it's also a very complicated machine, especially compared to other aircraft, and landings on a LHA can be rough. Pulling the engine was a PITA, take the wing off deal, unhook all the puffer ducting, ect, where as an F18 was open a couple panels and and in short order drop it on the cart.
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Neatly done, the Marine's didn't always do so well with the Harriers, I saw the end result of one getting a landing wrong, panicking and trying to eject, the canopy's explosive tape didn't go off so he was shredded by the seat breaking through it. The recovered canopy from the basically undamaged aircraft arrived as a bloody mess at the Hamble-Le-Rice plant where it was made, IIRC it was a 'field repair' to the connector that had failed as the detonator/initiator functioned perfectly when tested.
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F-35B (B = Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing variant) vertical takeoff test.
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Harrier crash lands. Pilot puts off ejecting until fire engulfs the cockpit.
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