RAF fighter pilot - coloured

Well here's the completed version of the RAF Harrier pic. First of all the pilot, Flight Lieutenant Racheal Baxter is a Harrier pilot for the Royal Air Force's, No 4 Squadron. You can see that I have added the squadron colours to the fighter in this pic

The Fighter is none other than the British Aerospace GR.7 Harrier 2 (US military designation the AV-8B). As I have said before the manuvering capablities of this fighter is second to none due to the fact that it is one of the few exsisting types of VTOL (Vertical Take Off & Landing). One other type of VTOL I can think of off the top of my head is the Russian Yak-38 but the GR.7 is somewhat more advanced.

VTOLs have the unqiue ablity to hover & land like helicopters and fly like a fighter jet. With these kind manuverablity characteristics this fighter can land without a runway, stop in mid-air, perform pop-up helicopter style attacks.............the list goes on.

These fighters are usually armed with Maverick air-surface missiles, Brimstone anti-armour missiles, AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and Aden 30mm cannons.

An example of the brilliance of the Harrier was during the Fauklans war where one Harrier fighter had a trio of Argentinian (French made) Dassault Mirage fighters on it's 6 (its rear). The British fighter pilot clearly out gunned and sure that he was going die made one desparate attempt to defeat his opponents....................he pulled nozel control stick from the horizontal to the vertical position. With that one move he practically stopped in mid-air and all 3 Mirage fighters shot right past him and all 3 were treated to a sidewinder up the ass. That Harrier pilot got a Victoria Cross for that little effort