That sounds weird to me. As far as I know, if your wallet is encrypted with a password you won't be able to open it without the password. If you are able to open the wallet without a password, then it's not encrypted, and you should be able to send without a password. The only way you would be able to open a wallet without a password and not be able to send funds from that wallet is if an external signer is needed, such as a hardware wallet. A watch-only wallet will not allow you to send, so it won't ask for a password either.
Sorry if I'm missing something, but again I don't know of a scenario that would lead to the issue you've described.
electrum offers secrets only encryption where you can open the wallet file and view transactions and balance without providing the password. you only need to provide the password when sending bitcoin or trying to view the seed.
it's not a watch only wallet. it's just encrypted differently (secrets only encryption).
look up btcrecover which is an open source python script for bruteforcing electrum passwords.
https://btcrecover.readthedocs.io/en/latest/