An F-35 jet may have crashed in South Carolina on Sunday due to bad weather, new audio suggests – as questions grow as to why the disastrous exercise was allowed to continue.
According to a Forbes investigation in November, the F-35B Lightning II that the unnamed Marine pilot flew is likely at risk of malfunctioning when flying in thunderstorms.
Its sister jet, the F-35A, is more severely affected and cannot fly within 25 miles of lightning.
The problem lies in the F-35’s Onboard Inert Gas Generation (OBIGGS) system, which pumps nitrogen-enriched air into the fuel tanks to inert them, preventing the plane from exploding if struck by lightning.
“F-35B and C variants experience some of the same OBIGGS issues as the F-35A but have been able to mitigate operational impacts,” said Chief Petty Officer Matthew Olay, spokesman for the F-35 Joint Program Office, in an email to Forbes last year.
Audio recordings from Sunday’s crash show the pilot telling emergency responders after ejecting that he “lost it due to the weather.”
Scorched earth from the crashed fighter jet can be seen in South Carolina on Monday
The F-35 crashed just about 80 miles from its base north of Charleston, South Carolina
It took off in tandem with another F-35 from Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina on Sunday and ejected at an altitude of 1,000 feet – slightly less than the height of the Empire State Building.
He was in a populated area just about a mile north of Charleston International Airport, prompting the pilot to parachute into a residential backyard.
An emergency call was made on Sunday at 1:42 p.m.
In an audio recording preserved by Charleston County Emergency Medical Services, a man on the phone says, “He’s not sure where his plane crashed and said he just lost it to the weather.”
The jet was on autopilot at the time, Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman for Joint Base Charleston, told NBC News.
Separate audio obtained by aviation enthusiast @aeroscouting appeared to show air traffic control towers in the area trying to make contact with the unmanned jet. The “zombie jet” in discussion is believed to be SWEDE-11.
Air traffic control attempts to speak to SWEDE-12, the wingman, and says they have lost contact with SWEDE-11.
“SWEDE-12, do you have external communications with your wingman – he is not on… frequencies,” the ATC official says.
ATC tells the pilot of the SWEDE-12 tandem aircraft that they will report to his colleagues as “NORDO” – flying without a radio.
The missing jet flew about 60 miles before crashing near Bartell Crossroads in a rural area with manicured agricultural fields.
A South Carolina couple told NBC News they saw the plane flying “almost upside down” overhead.
“Our kids always say hello, so we said, ‘Look at the plane.’ “Oh my God, it’s so low,” Adrian Truluck said.
“And it was about 100 feet above the treetops, almost turning over.”
Her husband, Stephen Truluck, added: “It was probably three-quarters of the way there,” turning around.
“We could see the canopy.”
File images show an F-35 flying at a frightening angle
A Marine Corps pilot safely ejected from an F-35 Lightning II jet over North Charleston on Sunday, but his plane was not located until Monday afternoon
The Marines were unable to locate the crashed plane for 28 hours, prompting a humiliating call on social media for help finding the missing $80 million jet.
Richard Aboulafia, an aviation expert, told the New York Post that the pilot was likely flying the stealth fighter without tracking capabilities activated, making the search difficult.
“If you turn on the onboard device, it would be easy to locate,” he said.
“But this is a stealth aircraft. If you don’t turn on the device in question, it will be difficult to make contact. Most likely he or she didn’t have much time to react.’
Once located, a Marine Corps team was dispatched to secure the wreckage, and a second team that conducts aircraft accident investigations was sent to the site.
However, given its proximity to storms and concerns about its sister aircraft, the question arises as to why it was allowed to fly at all.
The National Weather Service issued a “special weather statement” for the Charleston area, warning of winds of 55 miles per hour.
They also warned of thunderstorms, heavy rain and “isolated tornadoes.” In fact, radar images from Sunday around 2 p.m. show thunderstorms across the entire region.
The Marines did not comment on the causes of the “mishap” or the ongoing investigation.
The pilot who got out has since been released from the hospital.
The Marine Corps has announced a so-called “safety freeze” – the grounding of its fleet for two days.
The move is to “ensure the service maintains operational standardization of combat-ready aircraft with well-prepared pilots and crews,” the Marines said.
Sunday’s accident was the third major incident involving Navy aircraft in the past six weeks.
In August, three U.S. Marines were killed when a V-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft crashed during a training exercise in Australia.
Shortly thereafter, a Marine Corps pilot was killed when his fighter jet crashed near a base in San Diego during a training flight.
According to a May 2023 report from the US Government Accountability Office, the jet is among the US Department of Defense’s most expensive weapons system program.
According to the report, the Defense Department is weighing its options to modernize the engine and the “overloaded” cooling system requires the engine to operate “beyond its design parameters.”
“The additional heat increases wear and tear on the engine, shortens its lifespan and increases maintenance costs by $38 billion,” the report said.
Former Marine Dan Grazier, who works at a defense watchdog and warned for years about safety problems with the F-35, said a software error or a cyberattack could have caused the missing jet to malfunction.
He told : “There are thousands of entry points and vulnerabilities across the organization through which a hacker could access the software.”