The Marines' Bad Luck Plane

Why the Harriers keep crashing

They wear the insigne of the ace of spades, card of death, on their olive-drab flight suits, and they speak with studied confidence of their assignment. They are, after all, among the best trained pilots in the Marine Corps, and they would hardly betray anxiety over the risks of flying anything, much less a nifty little plane designed to revolutionize naval aviation. In the placid calm of the ready room of Marine Attack Squadron 231 at Cherry Point, N.C., Captain Cliff Dunn, 33, declares: "We're fairly convinced there's nothing wrong with the plane. We wouldn't fly it if we thought there was. Nobody I know has a death wish."

Yet, 24 of the 110 Harrier AV-8A jump jets, the British-built aircraft capable of leaping straight up from a carrier deck and then accelerating to more than 500 m.p.h., have crashed since the Marines first bought them seven years ago. Death toll: nine pilots. Six of the planes have gone down this year, the latest on July 26 in Pamlico Sound off eastern North Carolina, killing its pilot. Just two weeks before that, another pilot was killed when his plane dove into the Atlantic off the North Carolina coast after having performed its feat of hummingbird derring-do from the carrier Saratoga for an audience that included Navy Secretary W. Graham Claytor and Budget Director Bert Lance. Financial losses on the Hawk-er-Siddeley planes, which now cost $3.4 million each, so far have totaled $60 million.

Far from conceding any serious flaw in design, maintenance or pilot training. Pentagon brass and Marine Corps senior officers insist that nothing is wrong and refuse to ground the plane. Says Major

General Richard Carey, commander of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Cherry Point: "This aircraft has an accident rate which is no higher than with certain other aircraft at comparable points in time." Nonetheless, the Pentagon concedes that the Harrier currently suffers the highest accident rate of any U.S. military aircraft -- an average of 5.32 crashes for every 10,000 hours of flight time.

The Marines have ordered 350 more Harriers, but privately some officers say the crashes may result in the phasing out of all Harriers, which are designed for backing up typical Marine-style assaults on beachheads. Says one pilot: "The Ma rine Corps is trying to keep the Harrier funded. But it's hard to get money when your planes keep plunking in the ocean."

Marine Corps enthusiasm may be the root of the Harrier's troubles. General Carey acknowledges that the decision to assign young pilots fresh from flight school to qualify as pilots of the complicated Harrier, along with the Marines' usual penchant for difficult missions, may have been factors in the crashes. Senior officers in the British Royal Air Force agree.

The U.S. Marines, they argue, underes timated the difficulties of flying a plane that rises and descends on a hot shim mering column of air blasted from its own nozzles, which the pilot must swivel horizontally for ordinary flight. One reason why not just any eager young pilot should fly a Harrier, says British Air Commodore Paddy Hines, is that it must often fly at be tween 250 and 500 ft. -- an exercise demanding "high concentration and a very hard work load from its pilots." Two-thirds of the R.A.F. Harrier pilots had at least 1,000 flying hours on other aircraft before they were selected for Harrier training. Those with less than 1,000 hours are called "first tourists" -- and generally fly Harriers with a more experienced pilot in the other seat. Among the Harrier's more enthusiastic "first tourists": Prince Charles, who delights in taking off vertically and then skimming along at minimum altitudes.

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