British Aerospace Sea Harrier British Aerospace Sea Harrier The British Aerospace Sea Harrier is a naval short take-off and vertical landing/vertical take-off and landing jet fighter, reconnaissance and attack aircraft; the second member of the Harrier Jump Jet family developed. It first entered service with the Royal Navy in April 1980 as the Sea Harrier FRS1 and became informally known as the ""Shar"". Unusual in an era in which most naval and land-based air superiority fighters were large and supersonic, the principal role of the subsonic Sea Harrier was to provide air defence for Royal Navy task groups centred around the aircraft carriers. The
Supermarine Type 324 Supermarine Type 324 The Supermarine Type 324 and Type 325 were British two-engined fighter designs proposed as the replacement for the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane. Neither of them nor a revised design - the Type 327 - to carry cannon was accepted for development and production. As an aircraft to succeed the Hurricane and Spitfire then entering service, Air Ministry specification F.18/37 required a 400+ mph (at 15,000 ft) fighter with twelve .303 inch machine gun armament. Hawker Aircraft submitted a single seat, single engine design with two possible engines, the Hawker Tornado powered by the Rolls-Royce Vulture and