And the hokey History Channel style narration...

@@Regolith86 Thank you. That voice makes me grind my teeth.

SOMEBODY. GETS. IT. omg

@@Setebos And he talks soo fast, like he's a kindergartener who just discovered the magic of his mom's candy stash for Halloween.

HOLY MACKEREL!!! I legit thought you were being dramatic about the plagiarization, but sure enough, I went to his Yak-3 video and the script was word for word identical to the Wikipedia page. I can't believe this sh*t stain of a human is actually straight up reading a wiki page and making money off of it by pretending it's his own. Like wow.

Unless this aircraft was equipped with an ejection seat that allowed for *zero airspeed/zero altitude ejection,* I _presume_ there was no contingency for a pilot ejection in case of engine flameout in a very low altitude hover.

You need to see the earlier experiments with a 2”square platform fed by two huge diesel compressors and you had to fly this hoverboard by moving your feet.

G'day, Yeah, it's good that nobody got hurt and that they didn't crash it..., but Jetfighters which take off vertically is a Project which turns out to be not worth doing. Such is life, Have a good one..... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !

@@WarblesOnALot Still, the the Hawker Harrier had a long service both in Britain and in the US Army!

@@Hiznogood G'day, Yes, in a way, they did ; but not in the role they were designed for. The Brit's flew Harriers off Carriers, as Air Superiority Point-Defence Combat Air Patrol Fighters..., not as Ground Attack based beside the Army and camping in a Forest sleeping in a Tent. Then after Somalia's Blackhawk Down the Yanks set up a Test Rig to hold every Aircraft they operate, rigidly on a Pylon in front of a Grid of 16 Turboprop Engines..., where they start the Specimen, run the Engine at Operating Flight Power, apply the appropriate Airspeed, and then shoot it with various Weapons while filming from all angles using High Speed Cameras..., to see what Weapon does how much damage to what...; and then they re-engineered the Vulnerable bits, so that Rifles could not down a Blackhawk again, kinda thing. And the Harrier can be shot down in flames with a Semi-Automatic .22 Pistol, if one hides under the Flight-path and hits a low slow Harrier wallowing in to land Vertically, impacting the Aluminium Hydraulic Brake Lines on the rear Main Undercarraige Leg..., a hit on which sprays high-pressure Hydraulic Fluid (Hydrocarbon) into the Red-Hot Efflux of the rear Nozzles of that double-bifurcated Fan-Jet. And then the Hydraulic Fluid atomises into a BLEVE Fireball, to reward any Infiltrator who can hit a Car-Tyre sized Target at 50 yards, with a Magazine-Dump. Which is WHY the USMC never ever deployed their Harriers ANYWHERE that Guerillas or Commandos might perhaps maybe possibly sneak up and lurk, waiting, outside the Downwind boundary of ANY Forward Operating Base. And, being V/STOL or STOVL capaple prevents being Supersonic..., so therefore thus and because ; despite appearances, the Harrier was actually mostly a Dud. After GWHB had had his little Iraqi Excoursion, Air and Space Smithsonian magazine ran a feature article on the Testing Facility, in which I read of how easy a bit of Meat a Harrier actually turned out to be. Such is life, Have a good one..... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !

@@Hiznogood enter the f35

@@Hiznogood Marines, but yeah. Still technically in service with the Marines. It also served in plenty of other nations.

Indeed. The first zero zero seat was not demonstrated until 1961 by the Martin-Baker company. Its pretty clear that anything major close to the ground would have been very difficult for the pilot to survive... Amazing cold blooded courage shown.

My former FIL was Chief of Flight on this program.

I take that as a compliment of the highest order ❤

@@RexsHangar You must now find the airplane equivalents to the stories of the IRN Kamchatka and to French Pre-dreadnoughts. ...just kidding.

@@SephirothRyu Airplane equivalents to French Pre-dreadnoughts would be French bombers of the 1930s.

@@RexsHangar your voice, jokes and research (with visuals) are all on par with Drachinifel, really good!

Yep, that was my first thought as well. The "Natter" was propably the first VTOL - but a total disaster. And flew only 1 time.

Also was a rocket. This video is entitled the world's first jet vtol. There was also the convair pogo turbo prop which flew a year before this but also not a jet.

The first VTOL airCRAFT would have to be the first hot air baloon. Whereas the first POWERED VTOL aircraft were the first helicopters. The Natter on the other hand could only launch vertically with booster rockets. Which other aircraft like the Starfighter did later on as well, without being classified as VTOL. The first legit VTOL airplane (i.e. taking of vertically unter the power of its own engine) would have had to be the Pogo.

Many people care for and watch your mighty and powerful subscriber series

It's a somewhat complex question. In theory more small carriers might be more flexible and survivable. Larger carriers have normally brought all weather operation and and the ability to fly bigger planes. It's not clear that a large vtol carrier would solve the problems of either. I suspect if you are making a carrier large enough to fly conventional aircraft than you might as well do that.

Remember, this was a time when using nukes against ships was considered good idea 0:46. Having multiple smaller carriers spread out at large area made more sense than one or two monsters that can be killed with single nuke.

Because... who needs an airforce base when you can take off from your back yard space.

“Just imagine how wars would be…” Still horrible?

"The only reason" is that "someone cut the funding"? How about the fact that it was repeatedly proven, by all prototypes of this nature (and there were several types), that it was completely impractical and downright dangerous for a pilot to try to land a plane backwards with just a little mirror or 2 to see where he was going?

@@mikearmstrong8483 I did not consider that though now that I think about it they could easily be damaged by enemy fire and not be able to take off safely

@@JTA1961 I can't remember where I saw it, but when the British were deployed in Germany in the 1970s they did some tests and found that they could store the harriers in hidden locations such as in some woods and then roll it out onto a nearby road and take off vertically. Not ideal because it had to have a reduced payload but I still think its cool that it could be done

Without the landing setup though, they just tried landing tail first on the ground. Which was far more hazardous than this.

In what way is the X-13 not a true VTOL plane?

The only thing the Harrier can claim to be the first in is thrust vectoring. In every other respect, it is no more a VTOL than the tailsitters were, if anything, less so (considering that the Harrier can't lift off vertically at max takeoff weight).

Though it's worth considering that this concept, namely turning the landing platform by 90° and make the plane hover on it's tail would, if generally applied, offer far more possibilities than the variable thrust concept. In theory, any plane with a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than one can pull this stunt off. Which would include many many modern air superiority fighters. And it can be done without the complicated engineering of the Rolls-Royce Pegasus. I mean, if the Royal Navy had stuck to full-scale airplane carriers, the Harrier would probably have remained a rather obscure aircraft as well, because it never served in the role it was designed for; An air battle without airfields.

What separate "lift engines" does this plane has in your eyes?

WTF? Please define what a “purest” VTOL plane actually is? And what other engines are you seeing in this plane? You must be a Brit to make such a stupid comment.

@@mopar_dude9227 you'd have to be a yank to create such a stupid aircraft, the fact that this was seriously entertained as a possibility is laughable

@Mopar_ Dude he doesn't actually say this plane has other engines. I think he means compared to other types that entered service. Ie the yak38 and the F35. . .

And of course, the Harrier actually went into production AND fought in combat, so yes much purer than this interesting but dead-end R&D project.

The X-1 was a pure test aircraft, and yet it's still correctly called the first supersonic plane. The title never says "production aircraft", there is nothing disingenuous about it.

@@rockyblacksmith It's not the Harrier, that's why so many people here are upset that the X-13 was the first VTOL jet plane.

You should be able to get over it, because he is simply pronouncing it in British Queen's English. Now, if he had any speech impediments or quirks, I would be annoyed as well, but luckily, I haven't heard a single word from him sounding weird or unusual. So far... lol

@@Wolf-Spirit_Alpha-Sigma which is the Queens English?? There are so many British accents and so different. There are what 6 or 7 London accents alone. Which one does the queen use???

@@skooter2767k The so called 'received pronunciation', a.k.a. the Queen's/King's English or informally: the BBC (tv network) pronunciation. It has most in common with the dialects of South East Midlands, namely London, Oxford and Cambridge. I was taught that "accent" and grammar at school, as a second language - which I ditched in favor of the more streamlined and intuitive (in my view) 'General American' English. But you're correct that there is a gazillion English accents, or rather styles of pronunciation, all over the world.

@@Wolf-Spirit_Alpha-Sigma He's Aussie dude, but the way the higher educated have their accents.

@@Terraceview Sure...