Re the Yak-38 – I think if you study the flight hours per fatality, it was actually safer than the Harrier.

That may be so; I don’t have any figures to compare the two types but there is definitely something ‘odd’ about the figures that you quoted:

Number of aircraft in squadron service/No of accidents/Total hull losses/Fatals

Harrier 241/83/57/52
Yak-38 115/16+2 (in 1981)/12+2(1981)4+1

To tidy those up a bit they seem to be saying that up to 1981 at least:

Aircraft in Service/Accidents/Total hull losses/Fatals

Harrier 241/83/57/52
Yak-38 115/18/14/5

What seems strange to me is the number of fatalities compared to the number of ‘total hull losses’ for the Harrier and the stark difference between that figure and the ones quoted for the Yak-38. It seems certain to me that at least one type is being presented here as a ‘death-trap’!

I’m not saying that the Harrier wouldn’t have suffered a relatively high number of losses against total flight hours; by design the Harrier was a short-range battlefield-support aircraft, so there would have been a lot of low-level and a high number of relatively risky VSTOL take-off/landings per flight-hour but some actual loss statistics for RAF aircraft present a far different picture of fatalities against losses.

The figures I have immediately to hand are for Harrier GR1/GR3/T2/T4 lost between 1969 and 1991 and total some 55 aircraft that could be regarded as ‘total losses’ resulting in 17 aircrew fatalities (the figure may be one or two higher). Nowhere near the 90% fatality-rate your figures would suggest.

Some of the other statistics are interesting.

Nine Harriers were lost in mid-air collisions, eight of them in collisions between two Harriers, and these resulted in seven fatalities (two in one Harrier T4).

The other high cause of fatalities seems to be ‘controlled flight into terrain’ with at least seven pilots killed due to this cause.

Nine Harriers were lost due to ‘birdstrikes’ but in each of these cases the aircraft was abandoned and the pilot survived. I’ve heard it said that the Harrier was particularly vulnerable to this danger because of the turbofan engine layout.

Nine Harriers were lost due to ‘engine failure’ (some of which may have been undetected birdstrikes) but apparently there were no fatalities (eight ejections) from this cause.

There were about 35 successful ejections from these 55 losses and that figure alone presents a very different picture from the figures that you quoted.