The first officer reported to Mehamn Aerodrome Flight Information Service (AFIS) at 13:22 that the aircraft was at 2,000 feet (610 m) altitude over the Tanafjord and had an estimated time of arrival of 13:33.

The flight path was monitored by an officer at the Royal Norwegian Air Force (RNoAF) control and reporting center in Honningsvåg between 13:23:20 and 13:25:25, after which the aircraft no longer appeared on radar.

[6] Two RNoAF CF-104 Starfighters and a Westland Sea King at Banak Air Station participated in the search along with two other military helicopters, as did a Twin Otter of Widerøe and an aircraft of Norwegian airline Norving.

The breakthrough came at 17:39 on 13 March, when an NSSR vessel found the wreck at 45 meters (150 ft) depth, 1.1 kilometres (0.7 mi) north of Teistbergan.

Twin Otter pilots from both Widerøe and the RNoAF confirmed that control of the aircraft's altitude could be difficult in conditions of strong turbulence.

Among the aircraft participating were RNoAF F-5 Freedom Fighters, F-104 Starfighters and F-16 Fighting Falcons, as well as United States Air Force F-4 Phantom IIs and F-15 Eagles.

The first was the two-seat Harrier serial number XW925 with Wing Commander Peter Squire as a pilot and Norwegian Major Bjørnar Vollstad.

Red 1 was subject to an air burst; Squire did not register any damage, but chose to return to Tromsø and asked for a priority landing to be on the safe side.

The pilot of Red 2 believed his weapons were not secured and chose to carry out a priority landing at Bardufoss Air Station, located nearby.

The commission's members carried out interviews with dozens of civilian and military air traffic controllers, pilots and boat skippers; none had ever observed foreign aircraft in the no-fly zone, although all had heard rumors of such activity.

[17] The first investigation was carried out by a military commission, led by Lieutenant General Wilhelm Mohr and consisting of Captain Stein I. Eriksen, Police Inspector Liv Daae Gabrielsen, and pilot Hallvard Vikholt.

[19] The first commission concluded that "vital parts of the vertical stabilizer had collapsed because of overload while still airborne ... making further control of the aircraft impossible".

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation's (NRK) main news program, Dagsrevyen, chose to emphasize the part of the report which was deemed newsworthy – that the captain had taken medicine without permission from an authorized aviation physician.

Quickly after the accident there began to circulate rumors about various details of the salvaging operations; which were subsequently easy to verify as not being true.

[25] The issue escalated with the captain's brother, Widerøe's chief pilot John Hovring, stating that the crash must have occurred as a result of a collision with a fighter or missile.

The new members were Appeal Judge Christian Borchsenius, Erik Øie of the Norwegian Civil Aviation Administration, and Professor Janne Carlzon of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

The expanded commission was ordered to especially look into three issues: all air movements in the area at the time; how the crack in the torque tube was caused; and the use of medication by the pilot.

Parliamentarian Erling Folkvord (Red Electoral Alliance) subsequently raised questions about the accident in Parliament to the Minister of Transport and Communications regarding the investigation, and had a chapter in a book he wrote dedicated to the issue.

[16] The documentary's main researcher was former Widerøe pilot Ulf Larsstuvold, who had been a leading spokesperson favoring the Harrier theory.

Among the other seven members were former Bishop of Hålogaland, Ola Steinholt,[14] as well as four experts in the areas of aerodynamics, radar, risk management and flight operations, including a professor and a pilot.

[36] An employee at Kautokeino claimed that he had observed allied aircraft in the no-fly zone on the day of the accident, but investigations showed that he was not working in Finnmark in March.

[12] Captain Stein Aarbogh, working at Setermoen gunnery range, stated that on the day of the accident, two Harriers were expected, but showed up several hours late, at around five o'clock in the afternoon.

A Harrier does not have sufficient fuel for such a round trip and the aircraft would have passed more than ten airports on the route from Gamvik to Bardufoss.

It concluded that all witnesses of fighter aircraft had made statements many years after the accident and that there was a high degree of uncertainty as to the time of their observations.

[40] The last commission stated that, of several independent journalists working over time, failure to find evidence of a collision strengthens the dismissal of the Harrier theory.

[41] The documentary's researcher Ulf Larsstuvold stated that he believed that Parliament was acting as part of the cover-up and that the commission had secretly been instructed to conceal any evidence in support of the Harrier theory.

She was also concerned that the "fantastic stories" had put focus on aviation safety to the side, as Widerøe in later accidents also was found to not have a safety-minded culture.

[43] Dagbladet journalist Kristoffer Egeberg commented that for the Harrier theory to be true, hundreds – if not a thousand – military-, police-, government- and civil aviation personnel would have to keep quiet.

The sole purpose of a cover-up would be to protect a single British pilot and avoid the marginal discomfort of admitting that a NATO aircraft had flown in a self-imposed no-fly zone within Norwegian territory.

The Harrier theory is based on witnesses remembering intricate details up to two decades after the incident, which they had chosen to not inform the authorities or commission about during the initial investigation.