When A Fighter Jet Landed On a Cargo Ship скачать в хорошем качестве

When A Fighter Jet Landed On a Cargo Ship

How did this Harrier come to land on a cargo ship? Well in 1983 Royal Navy Pilot Sub Lieutenant Ian Watson was conducting a NATO Training exercise. He launched off of HMS Illustrious, tasked with locating a French carrier under combat conditions, turning off radar and operating in radio silence. After completing the search Watson attempted to return back to Illustrious but got lost out at sea. He then tried contacting the ship via radio but it had stopped working, his radar wouldn’t turn back on either. It was now getting dark and he was running out of fuel. He therefore decided to head to a nearby shipping lane and that’s when he spotted the Alraigo ship. His initial plan was to eject and hope the crew of the ship would save him. So he made a few flybys to make sure the crew knew he was there. but that’s when he realised the ship was carrying cargo containers creating a flat surface. He knew he had to try to land so with a minute of fuel left, he used the VTOL system to land (16ft wide) and touches down perfectly. But seconds later the plane rolls back coming off the cargo containers and crushing a van. It was dicy but he had done it. The ship came into port in tenerife where the royal navy would later collect the plane and repair it to fully working condition, retiring some 20 years later. The pilot was reprimanded and put on desk duty. But he would later fly again clocking 2000 hours on the harrier and 900 on the fa 18 hornet. But the real winners were the crew and owners of the Alraigo, under maritime salvage law, those who save a ship, cargo or in this case a plane at sea is entitled to a portion of it’s value. In this case this meant the Royal Navy paid them £570000, that’s £1.9M in todays money.