Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "One of Our Harriers is Missing! The 1983 Alraigo Incident" video.

  1. I've never understood why Watson was the one reprimanded. He was sent to sea with only 75% of the normal training for sea duty. The ground crew had failed to check the radios before takeoff, and the radios on that aircraft had been marked up as inoperative after the last landing. Watson couldn't check his radios, as he would have normally done before getting out of sight of the carrier, since he was under orders to maintain radio silence. He had less than 100 hours of flight time on the Harrier, and I suspect many more experienced pilots than him couldn't have done a better job trying to set the plane down on a couple containers on the pitching deck of a civilian ship smaller than the average frigate, all the while avoiding the ship's rigging. I'm sure the embarrassment of the Admiralty combined with being forced to pay out £570,000 in salvage fees to the Spanish shipping company were the real reasons Watson was forced to take the fall.
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  2. Not quite. The Argentine Air Force is still operating the twin turboprop Pucara, a modernised version of the original Pucara close air support aircraft flown in combat during the Falklands war. The Argentine Navy operates 10 T-34C-1 armed versions of the turboprop T-34 trainer, also flown in combat during the war. The US Air Force, Navy, and Marines also operate hundreds of the T-34C. Although this is the unarmed version, there's no reason it couldn't be converted to carry underwing loads if the occasion demanded it. Several hundred Embraer Super Tucano turboprop ground attack aircraft are also flying today. None of these can hold a candle to the largest turboprop combat aircraft ever, the Russian TU-95 bomber, also still flying.
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