Farewell to the Harrier

[markyboyacebassist]

After reading 'Sea Harrier Over the Falklands: A Maverick at War' by
Commander Nigel "Sharkey" Ward DSC, AFC, RN, you cannot fail to be impressed by this great fighter, far superior to the Tornado.
He says of the Harrier,

'It is because of its flexibility, its inherent flexibility, when we went to the Falklands, the whole world including most of the Royal Air Force was saying they are going to get their bottoms smacked because they’ve got no airpower, well what we had were 20 Sea Harrier aircraft, and the Argentines had 200 military aircraft against us and so we had a battle on our hands which we won because first of all we were very good in fighter combat, secondly, from the carrier you can generate many more sorties per day than you can from an airfield ashore because of the manner in which we do our business and so although we were totally outnumbered we managed to put enough aircraft in the sky all the time to oppose the opposition so you can say almost without any question that the Harrier, or the Sea Harrier as it was called, the Navy Harrier, ensured success in the Falklands.'