A week of anticipation and waiting while the RAF Recovery team that arrived in town on Saturday recovered the Harrier jump jet that crashed into the sea while performing its display at the Lowestoft Air show last Friday.

Early Saturday morning and the first team on scene after the Harrier crashed were the RAF Mountain Rescue team (not to stay long as there's not to many mountains around here) followed by the aircraft Recovery team from RAF St Athan in south Wales. They set up camp on a car park that was soon to became like a small self-contained village.

With much media interest Flt Lt John Clarkson from the recovery team is soon busy giving interviews to everyone from local radio stations to national news teams.

Nothing much happened on Monday or Tuesday but on Wednesday work finally started when a recovery barge arrived and started laying anchors to hold itself in place for the lift that was to be attempted on Thursday morning.

No lift on Thursday morning but the recovery finally started in the afternoon when divers went down and started to attach lifting gear to the aircraft, which in itself was a difficult operation as the currents were strong and the visibility was said to be no more than 6 inches.

The incident has attracted crowds during the week but when the recovery finally got underway huge crowds turned out to see the aircraft lifted from the water many of whom had seen it crash nearly a week earlier.

About 6 pm the moment everybody's been waiting for finally arrives when the aircraft starts it short journey to the surface.

After only a few minutes the aircraft broke the surface to cheers and applause from the crowd.

More of the aircraft soon becomes visible.

The aircraft's nearly out now and it can be seen that the whole of the pilot's cockpit has broken away and is only hanging on by a few cables.

Almost out now.

Free from the water at last the aircraft is swung onto the barge.

Now finally on the barge it was later taken to the harbour where it was cut up and placed on a low loader lorry for its final journey back to its base at RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire.