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911 Recording: 'Ma'am, a Military Jet Crashed. I'm the Pilot'

Marine tried to convey urgency of medical help to dispatcher
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Sep 21, 2023 6:50 PM CDT
911 Recording: 'Ma'am, a Military Jet Crashed. I'm the Pilot'
A U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II takes part in an aerial display during the Singapore Airshow 2022 at Changi Exhibition Centre in Singapore, in February 2022.   (AP Photo/Suhaimi Abdullah, File)

A military pilot whose advanced fighter jet went temporarily missing over the weekend is heard repeatedly requesting an ambulance in a perplexing 911 call from the South Carolina home where he had parachuted to safety, according to an audio recording released Thursday to the AP. The four-minute recording captures the bizarre circumstances for the three unidentified people involved: a North Charleston resident calmly explaining that a pilot just parachuted into his backyard, the pilot who doesn't know what became of his F-35 jet, and a puzzled dispatcher trying to make sense of it all.

"We got a pilot in the house, and I guess he landed in my backyard, and we're trying to see if we could get an ambulance to the house, please," the resident said. The pilot, who said he was 47, reported feeling "OK" after falling what he estimated was 2,000 feet. Only his back hurt, he said. The resident said the pilot looked fine. "Ma'am, a military jet crashed. I'm the pilot. We need to get rescue rolling," the pilot said. "I'm not sure where the airplane is. It would have crash landed somewhere. I ejected." Later in the call, he made another plea for medical help. "Ma'am, I'm a pilot in a military aircraft, and I ejected. So I just rode a parachute down to the ground. Can you please send an ambulance?" the pilot said.

The Marines have described the pilot as an experienced aviator with decades of experience in the cockpit. The F-35 crashed Sunday after a malfunction prompted the pilot to eject over Charleston and land in the residential backyard not far from Charleston International Airport. The fighter jet, which the Marine Corps said was at an altitude of only about 1,000 feet, kept flying for 60 miles until it crashed in a rural area near Indiantown. It took more than a day to locate the wreckage. In a separate eight-minute dispatch call released Thursday to the AP, an unidentified official tried explaining that there was "a pilot with his parachute" but no information about what happened to his plane or word of a crash. He said "the pilot lost sight of it on his way down due to the weather."

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The Marine Corps said Thursday that a feature on fighter jets intended to protect pilots in emergencies could explain how the F-35 managed to continue its travels. They said that while it was unclear why the jet kept flying, flight control software would have worked to keep it steady if there were no longer a pilot's hands on the controls. "If the jet is stable in level flight, the jet will attempt to stay there. If it was in an established climb or descent, the jet will maintain a 1G state in that climb or descent until commanded 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."

(More F-35 stories.)

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