Lost at sea...

Rescued by cargo ship...At first glance it looks like an ordinary story of lifesaving recovery from the clutches of death in a watery grave...But when you throw in the fact that the hapless and grateful rescuee was a Royal Navy pilot who also wanted his Sea Harrier returned to its rightful home, HMS Illustrious, the story begins to take on unique characteristics...

Following an incredible series of unlucky events which would have been more befitting of Wile E. Coyote, Sub Lieutenant Ian Watson found himself lost and hovering over the deep blue somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean...In a routine training mission, Lt. Watson left the ski-jump ramp of the Illustrious with instructions to rendezvous with his flight leader at a pre-determined point, and then locate a French aircraft carrier in simulated combat conditions which included radio silence and no radar assist...

The Lieutenant found himself where he figured he should be, but with no flight leader in visual range...His radar also showed no wingman, nor anyone else...Trying his radio, he found it to be inoperable...He could not find the Illustrious for recovery because his aircraft's navigation system was also inoperable...The emergency squawk transponder also failed...

Running low on fuel, he turned in the direction of a known shipping lane hoping to eject within sight of a vessel, and let the water claim the Sea Harrier...What he found was a Spanish cargo ship, the Alraigo, which had a number of steel shipping containers lashed to its cargo deck...Making a split second decision to try saving his aircraft, and with only minutes of fuel remaining, the flyer decided to use the Sea Harrier's VTOL capability to put it down on top of the containers...

As a credit to Lt. Watson's apparent paying of attention during his training (which was only 75% complete at the time of the incident), the 25 year old pilot put his aircraft down squarely where he intended on the containers...However, after coming to a vertical stop the aircraft began a slide backwards, thought to be the possible result of the startled ship's captain attempting evasive action to save his ship from damage...

Lt. Watson attempted at this point to retract his landing gear to stop the roll, but a delivery van on deck behind the containers caught the brunt of the impact halting the aircraft's motion...After reaching the Spanish port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, The Alraigo's captain and crew attempted to claim salvage rights to the warplane, and in the end were awarded a cash settlement...

The salvageable Sea Harrier was returned to the British Navy by Spain, avoiding further conflict between the two nations which were already in contention over the ownership of Gibraltar...Predictably the naval officers who were responsible for sending a pilot out alone before completion of his training in a warplane with faulty communication and navigation equipment managed to shift the blame to the young flyer who calmly made the emergency landing...

Taking his punishment for preventing the loss of valuable military property, in the tradition of naval discipline Watson accepted his reprimand and desk duty...He eventually completed his tour of duty, accumulating an additional 2,000 hours of flight time in Harriers, and another 900 in F/A-18's before resigning his commission...The Sea Harrier was later repaired and also returned to duty, following which it was assigned to an aviation museum where it resides today...

There is no record of whether Lt. Watson's improvised procedure was added to the emergency landing chapter of the Sea Harrier's training manual, but as the young flyer is said to have thought to himself as he approached his ad-libbed landing pad, "Oh well...In for a penny, in for a pound"...

Added in edit 5/20/2020: The video below was found after publication of this article...

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