Prince Harry Says He Once Sent a Fighter Jet to Blow Up His Dad
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In his new memoir, Spare, Prince Harry claims he sent a fighter jet after his father’s car.
Prince Harry, a reconnaissance officer, had been training to call in air support for friendly forces.
After King Charles dropped in for a visit, Harry diverted a nearby Typhoon fighter to conduct a mock attack on his departing vehicle.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and the former third in line to the British royal throne, has revealed in his new memoir, Spare, that he once called in a pretend airstrike—on his own father, King Charles.
Back when Harry was in military training in the late 2000s, he put his skills to work on then-Prince Charles, now the King of England, sending an RAF Typhoon to track him. Harry retasked the fighter to target a nearby barn instead, pretending to blow it to smithereens.
According to Prince Harry’s revelations in Spare, the incident took place in the late 2000s before Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan. All men in the Royal Family traditionally volunteer for the British armed forces as a way of serving the country. While most become naval officers or airmen, Harry joined the British Army instead.
Prince Harry joined the Blues and Royals, a cavalry regiment that today specializes in battlefield reconnaissance. According to the Royal Family web site, Harry led what in the United States would be considered a scout platoon of four Scimitar light armored vehicles and 11 crew members. It was at this point, prior to Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan in 2008, that the incident likely occurred. Reconnaissance troops in all modern armies, serving at the tip of the spear, typically learn to call in air and artillery strikes on enemy forces as part of forward observer training.
According to the story in Spare, Prince Harry was staying at a hotel in King’s Lynn, about seven miles northwest of the Royal Air Force base RAF Marham. As Prince Charles left after visiting his younger son, Harry called a nearby Typhoon fighter jet and told the pilot:
“New target. Gray Audi. Headed southeast from my position down track. Towards a big silver barn oriented east-west. The Typhoon tracked Pa, did a low pass straight over him, almost shattering the windows of his Audi. But ultimately spared him. On my orders. It went on to blow a silver barn to smithereens.”
Despite Prince Harry’s current, acrimonious relationship with King Charles and the rest of the Royal Family, the story comes off as a playful prank by a son at his father, though one that a non-Royal would probably not get away with.
Prince Harry, then a lieutenant, was subsequently sent to Afghanistan in 2008 to act as a forward observer for British forces. He was sent out of the country after an Australian newspaper accidentally outed his deployment. Harry went on to become an Apache attack helicopter pilot, piloting the British Army’s version of the Apache, the WAH-64. He departed the Army as a captain after 11 years of service.
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