This Leaked Video Shows an F-35's Fiery Crash in the South China Sea
Anonymous leakers within the U.S. Navy have uploaded footage of January's F-35 crash on the USS Carl Vinson.
The smartphone footage quickly spread across social media.
The Pentagon confirmed the footage was real and vowed not only to investigate the crash but the leak itself.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed the authenticity of leaked footage showing a Navy F-35C fighter bomber crashing aboard the USS Carl Vinson last month. The video depicts the jet striking the flight deck, skidding across it, and ultimately plunging into the waters of the South China Sea.
That series of events lines up with a January 24 statement from the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which characterized the incident as a "landing mishap." All told, seven sailors were injured. It was the first crash ever involving an F-35C.
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Commander Zachary Harrell, a public affairs officer for the Naval Air Force, confirmed the video's authenticity to The Hill: "We are aware that there has been an unauthorized release of video footage from flight deck cameras onboard USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) of the F-35C Lightning II crash that occurred Jan. 24, in the South China Sea."
The Navy will recover the jet as part of its investigation, but also wants to find out exactly who leaked the video.
"What I know is that the Navy is not only investigating, of course, the cause of the mishap itself, but they are investigating the release of this [flight] deck video that you saw," Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby told reporters during a February 7 press briefing. "And I won't get ahead of their investigation, but I know they're looking into what appears to be an unauthorized leak of official video."
On Sunday, the footage began to spread on social media sites like Reddit and Twitter. It appears that someone shot the content on a smartphone by recording surveillance footage being played on a desktop computer screen. U.S. Naval Institute News uploaded the video (embedded at the top of this story) to YouTube on Monday.
It shows an F-35C—the carrier variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—coming in for a landing. The aircraft is clearly too low in the video, with what sounds like the landing signal officer (the pilot in charge of guiding other pilots to a safe landing) shouting for the pilot to "wave off," or abort the landing and start over again.
As the footage shows, the pilot did not wave off and continued to attempt a landing. The plane belly flopped on the edge of the flight deck, skidding farther down the carrier, while the plane's fiery engine exhaust swept along the length of the ship for hundreds of feet. The pilot ejected two seconds after the crash and rescue personnel safely recovered them. The aircraft skidded 180 degrees and then fell into the ocean at "the crotch," a junction in the flight deck. Flight deck personnel, including at least one hose crew, immediately swarmed the spot where the F-35 went overboard.
Enhanced and close up of photo making the rounds purportedly of the F-35C that slid off USS Carl Vinson in the South China Sea on Jan 24 appears to show VFA-147 insignia on the tail pic.twitter.com/Pf7uo78BRS
— Mike Yeo 杨启铭 (@TheBaseLeg) January 27, 2022
An image (above), apparently taken from the flight deck before the aircraft sank, was also leaked to social media.
The U.S. Navy plans to recover the F-35 as part of the investigation, but also because the jet is equipped with the most sophisticated technology the U.S. military has to offer. Japan's Coast Guard warned earlier this month that a salvage operation—likely the recovery of the jet—will take place "approximately 300 miles northeast of the Paracel Islands and 170 miles off the western coast of the Philippines."
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