Hawker Siddeley P.1127 Hawker Siddeley P.1127 The Hawker P.1127 and the Hawker Siddeley Kestrel FGA.1 are the experimental and development aircraft that led to the Hawker Siddeley Harrier, the first "vertical and/or short take-off and landing" (V/STOL) jet fighter-bomber. P.1127 development began in 1957, taking advantage of the Bristol Engine Company's choice to invest in the creation of the Pegasus vectored-thrust engine. Testing began in July 1960 and by the end of the year the aircraft had achieved both vertical take-off and horizontal flight. The test program also explored the possibility of use upon aircraft carriers, landing on in 1963. The first three
Claims to the first powered flight Clément Ader's Éole of 1890 was a bat-winged tractor monoplane which achieved a brief, uncontrolled hop, becoming the first heavier-than-air machine in history to take off from level ground under its own power. However his hop is not regarded as true flight because it was neither sustained nor controlled. Ader would later make a false claim of a more extended flight. In 1896, Samuel Pierpont Langley, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had successful flights with several unpiloted models, and his "Number 6" model flew more than . From these successes, in 1898 Langley received grants from the War Department