COLUMBIA, S.C. — A Marine investigation blamed the pilot of an advanced fighter jet for ejecting from the aircraft when he didn’t need to, causing the F-35 to fly unmanned for 11 minutes before it crashed in rural South Carolina last year.
Military officials could not find the jet or its wreckage for more than 24 hours, a predicament the investigative report released Thursday blamed on the $100 million aircraft’s stealth technology as well as a transponder that didn’t work and the plane flying at low altitude with a system that automatically stabilizes flight without a pilot’s control.
The jet suffered several system failures as the pilot tried to land at Joint Base Charleston in heavy rain in September 2023 after a 50-minute training flight with another F-35.
Lightning had been reported nearby and the aircraft suffered an “electrical event” that caused malfunctions in its radios, transponders and air navigation system. The pilot’s helmet display also flickered on and off three times. The exact nature of what happened was blacked out in the report released to the public.
The pilot then said he had no reference to where he was in relation to the ground and was unsure what instruments he could trust, so he decided to eject.
But Marine investigators determined there was no need to abandon the aircraft because its computer was still controlling its flight as evidenced by the jet staying in the air for more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) and 11 minutes with no pilot.
The standby instruments were still providing accurate data and the backup radio was still at least partially functioning, according to the report.
The report noted that investigators aren’t sure what data the pilot was receiving or what he saw in his helmet just before and at the time he ejected because the crash recorder did not record that information.
The 47-year-old pilot survived the Sept. 17, 2023, crash, parachuting into the backyard of a home in North Charleston and asking the stunned homeowner to call 911.
He told the operator his back hurt but he was otherwise OK. The pilot was not identified in the 400 or so sometimes heavily redacted pages the Marine Corps released about the crash.
Parts of the report are carefully worded too. The investigators wrote that the jet was hard to find and the “loss of positive contact could also be partially attributed to the F-35B’s low-observable technology.”
The missing jet caused a media storm. Memes put pictures of F-35s on missing posters and milk cartons. The Marines tried to carefully explain how a $100 million aircraft with many classified components could disappear.
The strangeness of the crash was captured in the highly jargoned miliary reports. A situation report from the afternoon after the crash lists dozens of priorities: “1.A.1 Locate missing F-35 aircraft.”
The jet crashed in rural Williamsburg County. It took 17 days to collect and examine the wreckage and clean up spilt fuel and other hazards from the woods at a cost of more than $2.1 million, the report said.