Retired AV-8B Harrier Dedicated as Permanent Display at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium
The U.S. Naval Academy and the United States Marine Corps formally dedicated a decommissioned AV-8B Harrier static display at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland, on November 8. The aircraft will remain on permanent display, honoring more than a century of Naval Academy graduates who served as Marine Corps aviators in peacetime and conflict across the globe.
Senior Marine Corps leaders, including Assistant Commandant Gen. Bradford Gering, several deputy commandants, and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. James Adams III, attended. Gering, the senior Harrier pilot on active duty, said the dedication was a tribute to the enterprise that developed the aircraft, the pilots who flew it, the maintainers who kept it flying, the ordnance crews who armed it, and the leaders who sent it into the fight, and that it symbolizes the reason for Marine aviation, its culture, and its people.
The ceremony featured a precision flyover of F-35B aircraft from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 231 (VMFA-231), based at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina. Later that day, during the Navy vs. Temple football game, UH-1Y, MV-22B, and CH-53E aircraft also conducted flyovers.
Lt. Gen. Michael J. Borgschulte, the Naval Academy's 66th Superintendent, said the Harrier tells the story of all of Marine Corps aviation from nose to tail: Marine aviation began in 1912 at Greenbury Point, across the Severn River from the Academy, when 1st Lt. Alfred A. Cunningham became the first Marine aviator, and 114 years later that heritage has come full circle where it began.
(Source: U.S. Naval Academy)
Source: U.S. Naval Academy
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：一架美国海军陆战队 AV-8B 鹞式 II 攻击机静态展示，资料图，非揭幕现场。美国海军陆战队照片，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: A U.S. Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier II on static display, file photo, not the dedication ceremony. U.S. Marine Corps photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
