Posted on 06/30/2014 4:42:33 PM PDT by navysealdad
On Jun. 7, 2014, U.S. Marine Corps Capt. William Mahoney, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 263 (Reinforced), 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), had to perform Vertical Landing on USS Bataan, after his AV-8B Harrier aircraft experienced a front landing gear malfunction.
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I don’t see what the big deal is.
The plane is supposed to be able to land that way. Well not without the nose wheel but that isn’t that far of a drop and even then he could gently let it down.
As your post illustrates, professionals make the difficult look easy.
I have a lot of respect for military pilots especially combat ones. Just a couple of days ago, a pilot at Eglin was able to land his F-35 when it caught on fire at takeoff.
Still a Harrier was designed for vertical take offs and landings. That is a perfectly normal landing except he had to let the front down gently. I also understand he had to watch the ship to see where he was as he could not see the ground or in this case the deck.
C’mon, even I could have landed that bird and I’m not even a pilot, sheesh!
Just kidding, that took major cajones and he nailed it. Great job Capt. Mahoney. He made it look easy after thousands of hours of experience and even then I bet he was sweating balls.
Nice!
So they have a cradle onboard for just this type of failure? Makes you wonder if this is an ongoing problem with the AV-8 aircraft...
Still a Harrier was designed for vertical take offs and landings. That is a perfectly normal landing except he had to let the front down gently.
From the video it looked to me like he had to go to idle from about 10 feet and let it drop.
Wow, that took a huge amount of skill.
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