What does it feel like to to catapult off a boat, to accelerate to 150 miles per hour in two seconds and to fly a jet plane over land and sea at average speeds of 600-700mph? What skills do you need to safely land a £70 million F/A18E Super Hornet on the 300 foot deck of an aircraft carrier in the midst of a storm? Harrodian Senior pupils had the opportunity to discover the answers to these mind-boggling questions when Royal Navy fighter pilot and real-life ‘Top Gun’, Lieutenant Paul Armstrong visited Harrodian on 25th September.
What skills do you need to safely land a £70 million F/A18E Super Hornet on the 300 foot deck of an aircraft carrier in the midst of a storm?
In a gripping 20 minute presentation to our 13s pupils (Year 9), concluding with an adrenalin-stirring film of the Super Hornet in action, Lieutenant Armstrong, who is an old friend of Harrodian Head of Seniors, Captain Stewart, set out the merciless eight-year training path and the hundreds of hours of testing and retesting that have seen him come over hurdle after hurdle to make the grade. Today he is one of only 18 UK pilots qualified to land a jet aeroplane on an aircraft carrier and is about to embark on a year long global tour on secondment to the US navy aircraft carrier, USS John C Stennis.
After his presentation, Lieutenant Armstrong met and chatted with two Harrodian Sixth Formers, Tom and Joe, with a special interest in a services career. Resilience and determination, he told them, were essential qualities of those who made it as pilots. ‘I was a very ordinary boy from Ayrshire with a very ordinary education', he insisted. ‘I just wanted this job more than anyone else and worked harder than anyone else to get it. And I kept on believing. Once you stop believing in yourself, others will too.’
‘I just wanted this job more than anyone else and worked harder than anyone else to get it. And I kept on believing. Once you stop believing in yourself, others will too.’
Lieutenant Paul Armstrong