This Guy Deserves A High Five.
This story is by no means news, as it happened in 1983. It is however one of those stories for the ages and if you haven’t heard about it in the last three decades, well, here you go.
Sub-Lieutenant Ian Watson was taking part in a NATO exercise when he lost radio contact with his ship. To make matters worse, his navigational equipment also gave out. This made finding his carrier like looking for a needle in a haystack, but he tried nonetheless.
As you’ll hear in the interview, this pilot had one more minute of fuel left when he landed.
With the sun going down and running low on fuel, Watson was getting prepared to ditch the aircraft but found an alternative solution. Spotting a cargo ship in the distance, he decided to land on it. Now, we forgot to mention the one major thing that would make this possible. Watson was flying a Sea Harrier.
With no other option, he landed on the cargo containers and saved the plane from certain demise. The video explains the entire event in detail, but we’ll also say one more thing that they don’t mention in the video.
After investigating, the Royal Navy gave this young pilot a desk job, blaming his inexperience for not being able to make his way back to the deck. In our honest opinion, that was not right. What do you think?
Source: worldwarwings
