Harrier

by Francis K. Mason

Without this airplane the Falkland Island campaign would have been lost. Many photos and details. 1983, 200pages loaded with photos and info. 7 By 9 3/4"

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 26, 1981

Reviews

[Robert Hepple · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1981, 'Harrier' tells the story of the early variants of the Harrier combat aircraft, supported by over 150 well captioned photos and other illustrations. In being published a little over a decade after the Harrier entered service, the book cannot even attempt to be comprehensive, but it does present some excellent detail of the development of the early Harriers. Like many books about the Harrier, it begins by examining the various VTOL types that preceded it or played a part in its development. Whilst it does a good job of this it does go over the top so that, in a book only 185 pages long, the Harrier hardly gets a mention until page 68. In addition, the author spends way too much text early on having a rant about the Sandys White paper and poor decisions by the government and the RAF. What he does provide is some excellent stuff about the P1127, Kestrel, and Harrier including a surprising amount of info on the Harrier development batch. The book concludes with a look at the AV-8B then under development before moving on to some useful appendix details. A terrific book marred by a lack of focus in places.