The untold story of the Harrier fighter jet that landed on the deck of the ALRAIGO

Naucher.com

In the August issue of the maritime information magazine “Recalada”, published by the Vizcaína Association of Merchant Navy Captains (AVCCMM), an article by Raul Villa Caro, merchant captain and naval engineer, appeared on the extraordinary episode experienced by the crew of the general cargo ship ALRAIGO, owned by the García Miñaur shipping company, 93 metres long and 13 metres wide, when at around 10 pm on 6 June 1983, sailing off the coast of Portugal bound for Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a British Harrier vertical take-off plane landed on the deck, between the mast that supported the loading struts and the ship’s fitting-out.

The Harrier was attached to His Majesty’s aircraft carrier ILLLUSTRIOUS, but, armed with a missile and presumably other weapons, it was lost, unable to communicate and about to run out of fuel. The pilot decided, in violation of the most basic safety regulations, to risk a manoeuvre that did not end in tragedy because sometimes fate takes pity on men.

Villar Caro’s article, full of technical and military details (the original was published in the Revista General de Marina in 2011) and well documented on the figures of the captain of the ALRAIGO, the pilot of the HARRIER, the naval commander of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the company that owned the merchant ship, Naviera García Miñaur, of which his father was chief of staff, ends the story without telling the most important part of the story: the legal and social intricacies that finally allowed the crew to collect the rescue reward provided for in Spanish legislation.

The prize for rescue

The ALRAIGO arrived at its destination, Tenerife, at midday on 9 June 1983 with the Harrier on board. The shipping company and the crew appointed a single lawyer to claim the salvage prize, as there was no doubt that this was what it was all about: they had prevented a sophisticated military aircraft, whose value Villa Caro estimates at 1.5 billion pesetas, from ending up in the depths of the Atlantic. To ensure payment, Fernando Meana Green, the lawyer, requested the preventive seizure of the aircraft, a request that was denied by the corresponding Court on the grounds that it was an asset belonging to a foreign State. The Harrier had to be handed over to the British authorities and without him the chances of collecting the prize were very slim.

Meana Green then advised the shipowner and crew to seek arbitration in London, knowing that whatever the latter decided as a salvage prize (which in no case should be equal to the value of the salvaged item, as was claimed at the time without any basis) would go into the pockets of the shipowner in accordance with English law. In Spanish law, Article 7 of [JZ1] Law    60/1962, of 24 December, on aid, salvage, towing, discoveries and maritime extractions, establishes that, of the prize agreed by the parties or decided by the Central Maritime Court, two thirds will be shared between the crew of the salvage ship and one third will go to the shipowner. García Miñaur signed the arbitration agreement also on behalf of the crew, aware that at that point many crew members had already distanced themselves from the company.

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