Displeasure or BZ?
I was in Illustrious at the time Soapy went missing and we were all extremely worried (obviously) when he didn't come back.
The dit as to what happened (as far as I can remember it - please post corrections if anyone out there knows better, and is Soapy a Ppruner?) went like this:
Soapy launches for NATO Exercise (all radio and radar silence stuff, just for good measure), does his bit and then comes to look for Mother.
No Mother, anywhere. So he stooges around at high altitude trying to look for Mother, or something he might be able to land on (no diversion of course).
By now he is close to vapour in the tanks, but he sees a ship below, throttles back and descends to have a look.
B****r, small freighter, no flight deck and now on vapour, so he decides he'll have to eject, but reckons that as the Pegasus is still running it'd be better to slow down and eject close to the ship so they'll see him and come to pick him up.
He slows down to the hover alongside the freighter, and the engine is still running! Now he can see that there is a nice flat container he could land on, and a foremast with a light on it to line up on. So tranistions across and lands.
Of course, the container top isn't exactly Camrex'd (high friction flight deck coating for those who don't know), the jet start to slip so he selects undercarriage up and shuts down the engine.
By the time he got out of the aircraft the freighter's crew have turned up with fire hoses (there was a bit of smoke apparently) and rope to tie the Harrier down.
Back on board Illustrous we were delighted to find out that he was safe and well, and the rumour was that he'd get some sort of BZ for good airmanship, saving the aircraft etc.
There was also a rumour that somewhere along the line the wrong Lat/Long had been entered in to the aircraft nav system (don't ask how the aircraft got given Lat/Long unless you want to be very depressed).
As a postscript, we heard that the freighter crew just wanted a contribution to their beer fund and the dented motorcaravan (the jet slipped on to it) paid for. It was the union who told them they could claim salvage for the aircraft.
As it turned out the "Admiral's Displeasure" faction won the day - morale boosting was just as good then.
MOh