Pook - RAF Harrier ground attack - Falklands

From the pilots point of view, Low Flying over friendly territory was not particularly difficult or dangerous just great fun! All you had to do was get down as close to Mother Earth as possible, and avoid flying into any user-hostile obstacles. The odd thin telephone wire or leafy tree top wouldnt do you much harm, but an encounter with overhead power lines or solid ground was usually fairly terminal. Naturally, Low Flying in unpopulated and uncivilised terrain (such as the Falklands) meant not having to worry about any man-made obstacles, which were usually the most difficult to see. Hence, we could really go for it where necessary and get right down as low as we could.

A lot of bullshit has been spoken and written about how low it is possible to fly an aircraft such as the Harrier, and this is a favourite bar topic for the more macho pilots. The facts are that even the most competent (or foolhardy) pilot cannot get the aircraft much below about 10 feet above ground and that over pretty flat and well-defined terrain. At these heights and at speeds of 420 kt plus, it feels as if the aircraft is skimming the grass. Old films of the Red Arrows show that genuine aces such as Ray Hanna could get the Gnat down consistently to just a few feet over an airfield, but this was exceptional and not so easy in a larger and faster aircraft over normal terrain. (The tiny GNAT T1 was the RAFs Advanced Trainer of the 1960s and 1970s, and it was an aeroplane custom-built for hooliganism. Unlike its replacement, the Hawk, the Gnat was a genuine Fast Jet, capable of 600 kt at Low Level, combining high performance and, for its day, a very high-tech cockpit.)

When flying at such low heights, all of the ground up to some 200 300 metres in front of the aircraft appears as a blur, and the pilot can only take avoiding action on obstacles he can see and identify beyond this distance. As speed is increased, so proportionally does this blurred area, and there is an overwhelming instinct to fly higher in order to be able to identify small obstacles in time to avoid them. The pilots eyes are locked to the straight ahead position while this is going on; only the most experienced and practised will have any capacity left to look at a map or briefly look to one side to check for Bandits (hostile aircraft). The problem is much worse in a turn, when as much as 80 degrees of bank angle must be used to get around corners. This puts the wingtip some 15 feet closer to the ground at a stroke, and must be compensated for by an increase in height as the bank comes on. Consistent failure to do this leads to digging-in of the wingtip, followed by instant oblivion. Less experienced pilots tend to over-compensate for bank angle and will fly higher and higher above ground the more they are forced to manoeuvre, thus making themselves easy targets for the opposition.