- A new video of the January drive appears to show an F-35C striking the ramp of USS Carl Vinson before bursting in flames and skidding off the deck.
- In the days after the collapse, a photo of the F-35C floating in the sea was leaked online, followed by another video of the jet seconds before touchdown.
Video footage from the USS Carl Vinson’s Pilot’s Landing Aid Television (PLAT) camera has just been discharged online, showing what happened to the F-35C of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 147 that crashed on January 24, 2022 and subsided in the South China Sea.
In the days after the crash, a photo of the F-35C floating in the sea was leaked online, immediately followed by a video snort from the fantail and showing the last seconds before the touchdown. The US Navy confirmed a few days later the authenticity of both the photo and video.
The video seeped today was posted on Reddit and shows both the PLAT camera video and another point of view from the aircraft carter’s island.
We can see the Lightning II coming in with a rapidly increasing sink rate just before the touchdown, which readied the Landing Signal Officer (LSO) or “Paddles” to start screaming on the radio “power” and then “wave off, wave off” to instruct the cicerone to abort the landing and go around immediately.
The next chilling moments, which according to the cameras happened at 16:30:30, give someone an idea of what seems to be a ramp strike or a very short and heavy landing. The quality of the video as it was recorded from a computer shelter and the fact that it was recorded with some parallax do not give a very clear view.
Either way, the aircraft hit to a great extent hard the ship, with the impact shredding off the main landing gear and causing the F-35 to bounce on the deck and hitting it nose-first, earlier starting to skid sideways while engulfed in flames.
As the aircraft carrier’s crew calls for the fire emergency, the video swops to the other camera, which shows the aftermath of the crash.
The second camera’s footage begins as the LSO calls the pilot for diverse power on the final approach, before issuing the desperate “wave off.” The camera shows that the pilot bailed out as the aircraft underwent completely sideways in the middle of the deck and already engulfed in flames.
The F-35 than proceeded out of control and fell straight in the sea, while some hot pieces flew toward other aircraft parked on the deck, with the emergency crew quickly intervening to put the broadsides out.
The user that posted the video on Reddit says that the video was not recorded by him/her, without specifying where it was prevailed. The video shot from the fantail was first shared on Telegram, before becoming viral on Instagram and other socials. The US Argosy did not confirm the video’s authenticity yet, even if the footage appears to be consistent with the details about the incident that deliver surfaced so far.
Although there were many speculations concerning the root cause of the incident and how it unfolded, so far, no official report has been released. The video adds some more evidence about what happened while the official quest proceeds. Meanwhile, the US Navy is working on the recovery of the 5th-gen aircraft from the bottom of the sea.