The day a Royal Navy Sea Harrier made an emergency landing on a Spanish cargo ship

The British Aerospace Sea Harrier is a short takeoff and vertical landing/vertical takeoff and landing naval jet fighter, reconnaissance and attack aircraft. It is the second member of the Harrier family to be developed. It first entered service with the Royal Navy in April 1980 as the Sea Harrier FRS1, and became informally known as the “Shar”. Unusually in an era when most naval and land-based air superiority fighters were large and supersonic, the subsonic Sea Harrier’s primary role was to provide air defence for Royal Navy task groups centred around the aircraft carriers.

The Sea Harrier was deployed in the Falklands War and the Balkan conflicts, always operating primarily from aircraft carriers located within the conflict zone.

Emergency landing on a Spanish cargo ship

On 7 June 1983, the Royal Navy Sea Harrier ZA176 made an emergency landing on board the cargo ship Alraigo. The news footage in this post shows the recovery of the Sea Harrier ZA176 and Sub-Lt Ian Watson after the Alraigo docked in Santa Cruz, Tenerife in June 1983.

Notably, inexperienced Royal Navy pilot Ian “Soapy” Watson became lost while flying a Sea Harrier vertical take-off aircraft and landed the £7 million aircraft on the deck of a container ship, leading to superiors reprimanding him for his incompetence.

But as The Telegraph reported, in 2007 it emerged that behind the scenes they were trying to shift the blame elsewhere in order to avoid paying £570,000 in compensation.

In fact, a file released to the National Archives on 31 May 2007 describes how 25-year-old Sub-Lt Watson “incurred the displeasure of the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet” because of his inadequate flying skills.

However, Department of Defense records show that he had only completed 75 percent of the recommended flying hours before he was called to duty and assigned to fly an aircraft with a known radio defect.

An unnamed senior officer commented: “I am speechless, just like Watson.” Sub-Lt Watson had set off from the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious off the Spanish coast on 7 June 1983 to conduct a NATO search exercise.

The crew of the 2,300-ton Spanish container ship Alraigo was awarded a salvage claim and shared £340,000, with the remaining £230,000 going to the ship’s owners.