A wild 911 call from when an F-35 military jet went missing showed a confused neighbor reporting having a “pilot in the house” – and the pilot admitted he didn’t know where the $90 million stealth jet was now.
The 4-minute clip captures a 911 dispatcher struggling to understand what the ejected pilot and the man whose South Carolina home he landed on are trying to explain.
“We got the pilot in the house, and I think he landed in my backyard, and we were trying to see if we could get an ambulance to the house, please,” the homeowner said.
The dispatcher initially appeared shocked by the call, saying: “I’m sorry – what happened?”
The pilot then called, telling the 911 operator that he was 47 years old and that he felt “OK” after descending with an estimated 2,000 feet of parachute — but he complained that his back hurt.
“Ma’am, a military jet has crashed. I’m a pilot. We need to get the rescue rolling,” said the pilot.
“I’m not sure where the plane is. It will crash somewhere. I took it out.”
The pilotless fighter jet continued to fly for 60 miles at an altitude of 1,000 feet before crashing in the countryside near Indiantown – but it took the military more than a day to search the debris field after asking the public for help on social media.
Airmen from Joint Base Charleston walk down Old Georgetown Road while preparing the base during the recovery process for an F-35 that crashed in a nearby field in Williamsburg County, SCAP
The pilot of an F-35 fighter jet that crashed in South Carolina said in a 911 call that he had ejected and parachuted 2,000 feet. AFP via Getty Images
In a separate 8-minute dispatch call released Thursday, an unidentified official tried to explain that they had “the pilot with his parachute” but no word on what happened to his plane.
The caller said “the pilot lost sight of the descent due to weather.”
The officer also recalled hearing “quite a loud noise” earlier that “sounded like a tornado, maybe a plane.”
Eyewitnesses on the ground reported seeing the plane fly “almost upside down” about 100 feet in the air before hearing a loud explosion.
The jet, described by Lockheed Martin on its website as “the deadliest, quietest and most survivable aircraft,” belongs to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing’s training squadron.
It took off from Joint Base Charleston Sunday afternoon as part of what was billed as a routine training flight, officials said.
The pilot at the controls was described by the Marines as a service member with decades of flight experience.
The pilot, who has not been identified, was taken to a hospital after the crash and released Monday, Pentagon officials said.
The incident is still under investigation and a decision from an official review board could take months.
The $90 million F-35 crashed after damage the pilot blamed on weather prompted him to bail out.AP
But the Marine Corps said Thursday that flight control software on fighter jets meant to protect the pilot in an emergency could explain how the F-35 managed to stay aloft after the pilot ejected.
“If the jet is stable in level flight, the jet will try to stay there. If it is in a steady climb or descent, the jet will maintain a 1G state in that climb or descent until instructed to do something else,” the Marine Corps said in a statement. “This is designed to save our pilots if they are incapacitated or lose situational awareness.”
The military said the safety feature may have saved not only the pilot’s life, but also the lives of people on the ground.
The pilot told dispatchers he felt “OK” after descending with an estimated 2,000 feet of parachute.AP
“The good news is it seems to work as advertised. Another advantage in this case is that through the long-flying F-35, it avoids crashing into densely populated areas around the airport, and fortunately crashes into empty fields and forested areas,” the statement said.
It remains unknown why the multi-million dollar plane was not tracked as it continued its flight over South Carolina and how it could have taken more than a day to track a large fighter jet that had flown over a populated area.
The Marines said features that eliminate the jet’s secure communications in the event of a surge — a feature designed to protect both the pilot’s location and the plane’s classified systems — may be partly to blame.
“Typically, aircraft are detected through radar and transponder codes,” said Marin. “When the pilot is ejected, the aircraft is designed to erase (or ‘eliminate’) all secure communications.”
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
