Report: Harrier jet plagued by crash-causing glitches

Tuesday December 17, 2002

LOS ANGELES (AP) Military officials knew about defects, mechanical problems and maintenance lapses in the Marine Corps' Harrier attack jet but refused to spend millions on crucial repairs, even as planes crashed and pilots died, a newspaper investigation has found.

Deficiencies with the Harrier's engine, ejection system and wing flaps made the attack jet the most accident-prone airplane in the U.S. arsenal, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

Since the Marine Corps first bought the Harrier in 1971 from Britain, 45 Marines have died in 143 noncombat accidents.

``We took a revolutionary airplane with an underdeveloped engine program and we put it in the fleet,'' said Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., recently retired commander of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. ``We let the fleet figure out what the problems were and we killed people.''

Charles E. Myers Jr., a former director for air warfare in the Pentagon, described the plane as ``the nastiest horse in the rodeo.'' The Harrier rises vertically like a helicopter, hovers in the air, and then roars off.

Harrier pilots have been assigned blame for numerous crashes even when mechanical problems or inadequate training were major factors, the paper found.

Though Harrier pilots needed a minimum of 15 to 20 hours in the cockpit each month, they averaged just 8.2 flight hours a month in 2000. Pilots were forced to make do with simulators because the plane has been grounded 31 times in the last 12 years.

In 1997, Retired Capt. Stephen E. Brooks crashed his Harrier when a loose ball bearing ricocheted through the engine. He compares the Harrier to ``speeding your car 90 mph through a crowded shopping mall parking lot while playing the hardest X-Box video game imaginable and talking on your cell phone.''

Some have blamed crashes on deferred repairs to critical Harrier components.

In 1986, the Marines first discovered a flaw in the Harrier's wing flaps, which help provide the plane with lift.

Only after three planes crashed and two pilots died did the Marines and the Navy redesign the problem part, the newspaper reported. But it took 15 years before Boeing Co., which bought McDonnell Douglas in 1997, completed delivery of newly designed parts.

The Harrier's ejection seat also suffered ``known deficiencies,'' according to a 1998 report of the Harrier Review Panel, a Marine Corps commission.

Three pilots were killed between 1990 and 1998 and several others seriously injured. But the Navy, which controls the corps' aviation budget, declined to pay for a recommended steering system that would have given parachuting pilots greater maneuverability.

The Harrier's single Rolls-Royce engine has playing a role in more than half of all Harrier accidents between 1980 and 2001, according to a Times analysis of the Naval Safety Center's aviation database.

``The whole 20 years I was there, they were always doing engine modifications but they could just never fix it,'' said Clinton M. Higginbotham, a retired Marine Corps major who spent much of his career maintaining the Harrier.

Some Marine leaders blame the Navy for being tightfisted.

Former Navy secretaries countered that the Harrier proved to be more expensive, harder to maintain and more difficult to operate than other tactical aircraft.

The Harrier Review Panel recommended more than 50 fixes and upgrades to the aircraft in 1998. The Marine Corps and Navy committed $133 million to make the improvements over six years. As of Oct. 2, just 29 of the panel's improvements were complete. Another 19 are underway.

In addition, maintenance on the Harrier is a daunting task.

It take 550 man-hours on average to remove and replace the engine, compared with nine hours on a twin-engine F/A-18 flown by the Navy and Marines, and 10 hours on the Air Force's single-engine F-16 Fighting Falcon.

For every hour of flight in 2002, the Harrier required 25 hours of maintenance. Its cost per flight hour was $5,351 in 2001, including maintenance. For the Marines' F/A-18C, the cost was $3,871.

For financial reasons, the Marines have chosen not to equip the Harrier with a flight data recorder strong enough to withstand all crashes, the Times reported.

As a result, Marine Corps leaders believe pilots are responsible for a vast majority of accidents.

Yet, the wives of the fraternity of 350 Harrier pilots wonder whether the problems could be blamed on the plane or the pilot.

Col. John H. Ditto, the highest-ranking pilot ever to die in a Harrier, clocked two tours in Vietnam and 4,900 hours of flight time in his 24 years as a Marine. His planes were the A-4 Skyhawk and the F-8 Crusader.

In 1981, he chose to learn to fly the Harrier because several squadrons would fall under him.

With just 13.7 hours of flight time in the Harrier, Ditto lost control of the aircraft during takeoff and ejected into the ground.

His widow, Susan Page, said she feels heartbroken for his reputation.

``If you mention his name to anybody, they will say he was one of the best sticks in the Marine Corps,'' she said.

(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)