Hawker Siddeley Harrier
The Jump Jet
“The first jet that learned to hover.”
Hawker Siddeley · military
The original Hawker Siddeley Harrier was the only truly successful vertical-takeoff design of its era — the first operational jet that could rise straight up from a forest clearing, decades before the F-35B. It flew for the RAF, the US Marines and the Royal Navy, whose Sea Harrier cousins fought in the Falklands in 1982. Today, first-generation Harriers fly only in private hands.
278 first-generation Harriers were built. Today just a couple still fly, kept airborne by devoted civilian owners.
Smaller and more hunched than the AV-8B, with a narrower wing. Any first-generation Harrier flying today is a lovingly maintained warbird — a genuinely rare catch.
One might be overhead right now.
Bogey turns the The Jump Jet from a dot in the sky into a card in your logbook.
