Happy Birthday Hovered Flight

From Harrier by Francis Mason

The point had now been reached when everything seemed set to take to the air. Unfortunately Bill Bedford, Hawker’s Chief Test Pilot, had just had an argument with a tree while being driven in a car in Switzerland and was hobbling about with his leg encased in plaster cast, and it was in this uncomfortable state that he climbed into XP831 on October 21 (1960)…

…With the engine nozzles in the vertical, Bedford started up and fairly briskly opened up to maximum power; XP831 rose off the grid to the full extent of its wing-tip tethers – just twelve inches.

Shame that 50 years later with life in the type it is being culled and sorry for not sticking this in the other P1127 thread but I think it’s a great anniversary.