Hawker Siddeley Harrier variant
Hawker Siddeley Harrier Harrier T.4A
A member of the RAF's two-seat Harrier trainer line derived from the T.4, sharing the stretched fuselage and tandem cockpits common to the whole family. These aircraft accompanied the single-seat fleet through its GR.3 era, the one with the elongated nose thimble housing the laser ranger and marked target seeker, and some ended their careers as test airframes before passing into museum hands.
History
A two-seater for a demanding aircraft
The Harrier offered its pilots capabilities and challenges no combat pilot had been given before, so a two-seat conversion trainer with a stretched fuselage and tandem seating was ordered early in the programme. The T.4A belongs to that RAF trainer line, the one that accompanied the single-seater once it had reached GR.3 standard.
The GR.3 signature
The most visible change of the GR.3 over the GR.1 was the elongated nose thimble housing the Laser Ranger and Marked Target Seeker, which gave the aircraft the profile the RAF nicknamed the 'Snoopy nose'. Trainers of this period shared their engine and much of their equipment with the single-seater their crews were being prepared for.
XW934, from squadron to laboratory
XW934 (construction number 212017) illustrates the typical end of career for these airframes. It was flown to the RAE at Farnborough in 1990 at the end of its service life and served there as an electromagnetic compatibility test vehicle. QinetiQ donated it to the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust in 2009, and it is preserved complete with all its systems, catalogued by the museum as a Harrier T4.