re: I Was Today Years Old When I Learned the USMC Retired the Harrier jet last June

RIP in peace!!!

My 1st cousin was a pilot in the USMC and flew the Harrier for many years. First combat sorties in Desert Shield in 91. He went to North Georgia and graduated in 77 and retired as a Col around 2010. I was always proud that he flew that plane.

I was yesterday years old when I got tired of the today years old saying.

True story during my time at Tyndall AFB
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Marine group of Harriers came in for a Copper Flag Air Defense excercise.

Last bird in the pattern was their squadron commander. Instead of normal landing he brings his bird into a hover and proceeds down the taxiway to where the rest of his group has taxied and parked on the ramp, pilots still sitting in their idling planes.

He proceeds to do an " inspection" of each parked Harrier just as a training TI/DI would do to a formation....while still flying his Harrier! From people I knew that saw it....... it was glorious.

Unfortunately he did it w/o the permission of our wing commander and broke 17 gazillion rules by doing it. By the time he exited his A/C our wing commander was there to meet him on the tarmac. It is said the ensuing shouting match was epic and akin to King Kong and Godzilla discussing their differences.

The newly arrived Harrier group was subsequently refueled and departed with haste.

I would imagine to have overheard their conversation would have been one for the ages. :)

quote:

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I Was Today Years Old

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This phrase needs to die

The only account that I ever saw of him in action was published in The Marine Corp Press in 2021. Very long article but one of his sorties was cited.

In another, a flight of four AV-8Bs from VMA 542 were directed by an ANGLICO controller to a convoy of Iraqi BMP armored infantry fighting vehicles moving through the middle of al-Khafji.44 As pilot Major Jim M. Lee Jr. rolled into his attack, he noticed that for a split second al-Khafji looked like the downtown of a U.S. city in his windscreen. His bombs hit Iraqi vehicles and stirred up a respectable volume of SAMs, none of which scored a hit. The Marine AV-8Bs made repeated bomb runs and destroyed several of the BMPs, while the surviving vehicles retreated north

After the war, he started flying F-18s until he retired.

Those things are fricking death traps by the way. They need to retire them.