The Harrier to be used was the Hawker Siddeley owned two seat demonstrator registered G-VTOL. It was fitted with the Rolls-Royce Pegasus 11, the 21500 lb thrust engine currently in service with the RAF and USMC Harriers. It was to be the first time that the longer and heavier two-seater had been flown from a ship. Therefore, in our meetings with the Indian Navy, Robbie and I had been at some pains to point out that we only had estimates of our performance from Vikrant and that it would require cautious test flying, rather than a simple sales demonstration, allowing us to establish what weights we could lift from what deck runs in the hot monsoon conditions off the Indian coast in July.
    The ferry flight to India was uneventful, the route being Dunsfold, Naples, Akrotiri, Tehran, Kuwait, Masirah, Bombay. The ground crew followed along each leg in a Hawker Siddeley 748. In Bombay the team met the monsoons, an intensity of rainfall that someone used to shopping in Woking cannot be expected to comprehend. Sufficient to say that although the Harrier arrived at Bombay only 20 minutes late on the plans laid two months earlier, we were a day late arriving at Cochin, the Indian Navy base on the south west tip of India. The delay meant that the two days allowed for work-up flying from the airfield prior to going on board Vikrant had to be shrunk to a single day. I didn’t mind this but it was hard on Captain Tahiliani, the Director of Air Staff Division, Indian Navy, who was to fly in the rear seat. Since the Captain had not previously flown the Harrier it meant that he had to train very intensively to reach the standard necessary for him to control the aircraft himself in the confined environment of the deck.
    The morning of the first day allocated to the ship dawned hot and humid but fine and the short flight out to the ship with a vertical landing (VL) on the stern was completely straightforward. Due to the test flying aspects of the initial take-offs it had been agreed that I would fly the aircraft solo the first day and Captain Tahiliani and two other officers would join in on the second day.
    Examination of the deck markings showed that they had been painted just where I had asked for them but unfortunately the two foot wide centre line, down which the Harrier would roll, was in high gloss paint which was very slippery indeed when it was wet. Since the Harrier is controlled directionally by nose wheel steering it was clear I would have to run slightly to one side of this line. This caused some concern at first since the obstacle clearance on the left hand side with the Harrier on the line was only 8 ft 6 ins. Running to the right of the line would have taken the wing tip uncomfortably close to parked aircraft. However, there was an additional line already painted on the deck 7 ft to the left of the Harrier line and parallel with it so it appeared that providing the Harrier operated between these two lines all would be well. This was how the matter was left and after a short period of taxying round the deck to familiarise the deck handlers with the Harrier I was all set for the first take-off. This was done at a light weight down the full length of the 660 ft axial deck.
    The technique used for the first short take-off (STO) worked well and was retained in principle throughout the two days flying. It consisted of taxying the Harrier into position at the start of the run, running the Pegasus up to 55% RPM with the brakes on and the nozzles almost aft at 8 deg down. Then, on being given clearance to take-off, the brakes were released, full throttle applied and the left hand moved from the throttle to the nozzle lever as the run commenced. The aircraft was kept straight with the nose wheel steering controlled by the rudder bar and then finally, when the white line at the end of the deck reached the bottom of the windscreen, the nozzles were lowered to the required angle marked by the preset STO stop. There followed a short period off the end of the deck when I reflected how lucky naval aviators are not having to bother to climb over anything from hedges, trees and houses up to hills and mountains, as pilots flying from airfields usually do.
    Vertical landings (VL) with a Harrier are very straightforward because any approach path errors (slightly high, low, left, right, too slow, too fast etc) can be corrected after the aircraft has come to the hover, whereas in a conventional aircraft the pilot carries these errors with him right to touchdown. In fact the Harrier is so much easier in this regard that one has to remind oneself continually to stay alert and not relax because it is so straightforward.
    I digress; back to the Vikrant. After this sortie a second was done at the same light weight to allow me to feel certain I had got used to the deck technique and then the weight was increased by putting more fuel into the Harrier. The third take-off was with full internal fuel, the fourth through to the eighth were all at full internal fuel but the distance of the start point from the end of the deck was reduced down to as little as 370 ft. The remaining take-offs on the first day were with the Harrier as heavy as we could make it using fuel alone and for these the two 100 gall combat drop tanks were full (approximately 1600 lb extra weight). The run was eventually reduced at this maximum weight to 585 ft. On the eleventh flight the aircraft was landed back at Cochin for the night with the whole Hawker-Rolls team as well as our Indian hosts well pleased with the day’s activities.
    The second day’s flying saw Captain Tahiliani flying in the rear cockpit for the first six flights. He had no difficulty in taking control of the Harrier outside the hangar at Cochin and flying entirely unaided into a hover astern of Vikrant 20 minutes later. This, of course, illustrated why Hawker chose a two seater for the demonstrator. We say the Harrier can be flown by any pilot trained on modern military jets but people still tend to doubt it until they try it for themselves.
    By the end of his six flights on the second day Captain Tahiliani had flown a take-off himself on the full length of the axial deck and had accompanied me on the first angled deck take-off using the short 377 ft deck length. In addition I demonstrated a cross-deck VL just aft of the island to show the technique used when landing a Harrier if the ship is not steaming into wind. Captain Tahiliani then gave up his seat to Cdr Grewal, the Commander (Air) of the Vikrant. Cdr Grewal being a current Sea Hawk and helicopter pilot found himself delighted with the Harrier, carrying out a decelerating transition alongside the ship followed by an accelerating transition back to wingborne flight, with no assistance from me other than the odd word of encouragement over the intercom. The three remaining flights that day were with Cdr Raju, a Sea Hawk Squadron Commander, in the rear seat. On these flights we covered a VTO from the bow of the ship and a heavy weight STO from the 310 ft point. This particular take-off allowed those on the bridge and in flying control the novel experience of looking down into the cockpit of a modern aeroplane about to do a free take-off from a point over half way down the deck. It resulted in many “I just don’t believe it” comments.
    I mentioned earlier about the deck markings and the ideas that resulted from the Vikrant operations. The conclusion of the Indian Navy officers at the end of the Harrier flying was that the Harrier needed a total operating strip no wider than 38 ft 6 ins (I talked them into this; they wanted to reduce it by 6 ft!). If this strip was positioned down the port side of the ship it left another strip over 30 ft wide down the starboard side for parked and taxying aircraft as well as equipment.
    Thus, because of the Harrier’s good control on take-off and the small space needed to do a simple vertical landing, the concept of an angled deck is no longer important for the Harrier. This has two effects: it simplifies the design of new ships to straight decks and it enables a much wider range of hitherto obsolescent aircraft carriers around the world to become ideal homes for Harriers, offering a wide range of fixed wing roles at sea with unapproachably low levels of capital investment.
    The exercise finished as planned at the end of the second day. The two days with Vikrant had given us 21 sorties at an ambient temperature of 30 deg C. The surface wind was almost calm at a maximum of 3 kts and the wind over deck much less than one would normally expect. Despite these ambient penalties the Harrier had once again shown to a potential customer that not only can our brochure performance figures be met, with some margin in hand, but also that the aeroplane can be handled by existing military jet pilots with little special training.
    Editor’s note. Eric Crabbe was the flight test engineer on the trial. The parallel line deck markings that had happened serendipitously were found to be much easier to track during take-off than a single centre line, which prompted the pilot to make unnecessary small corrections, so were adopted as standard for Harrier carriers. This 1973 demonstration eventually resulted in the FRSMk51 Sea Harrier being ordered by the Indian government in 1979, the first of 30 being delivered in December 1983. The last FRSMk51s were retired in 2016 after 33years of service.