Uss Carl Vinson Aircraft Carrier - On January 4, the pilot of a South Korean F-35 made an emergency “belly landing” at an air base on Tuesday after its landing gear malfunctioned due to electronic issues, according to the South Korean Air Force.
Though the Navy has not revealed where in the South China Sea the crash occurred, Beijing claims almost all of the 1.3 million square mile (3.3 million square kilometer) waterway and has bolstered its claims by building up and militarizing reefs and islands there.
Uss Carl Vinson Aircraft Carrier
A video posted on social media over the weekend shows the stealth fighter that crashed on a US Navy aircraft carrier last month bursting into flames as it strikes the flight deck of the massive warship.
When the latest crash occurred, Carl Vinson and its de ella escorts de ella were operating in the South China Sea along with the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group in dual-carrier operations that began on Sunday, according to Navy social media accounts.
Six others were injured on the deck of the carrier. Three required evacuation to a medical facility in Manila, Philippines, where they are in stable condition, according to Pacific Fleet. The other three sailors were treated on the carrier and have been released.
To U.S. Navy fighter jet attempting to land on an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea had a "landing mishap" on the ship's deck Monday that left seven sailors injured, including the pilot, according to the Navy.
The 1.3 million-square-mile South China Sea has been the site of frequent naval activity in the past several years as China has asserted its claims over almost all of the area by building up and militarizing islands and reefs.
In May 2020, the pilot ejected safely when a US Air Force F-35 crashed on landing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The Air Force attributed the crash to a variety of factors involving the pilot and the plane's systems.
In April 2019, a Japanese F-35 crashed into the Pacific Ocean off northern Japan, killing its pilot. The Japanese military blamed that crash on spatial disorientation, “a situation in which a pilot cannot sense correctly the position, attitude, altitude, or the motion of an airplane,” according to the journal Military Medicine.
The pilot of a US F-35 jet ejected as his jet crashed on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier in the South China Sea, injuring seven, the US Pacific Fleet said in a statement Monday.
The F-35C, the newest fighter in the Navy fleet, is seen on a video monitor from inside the USS Carl Vinson, which was on operations in the South China Sea when the accident occurred on January 24.
The US Navy variant “features more robust landing gear to handle carrier takeoffs and landings, folding wings to fit on a crowded flight deck, larger wings, a slightly larger payload, and a slightly longer operating range,” according to the aircraft's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.
The F-35A, flown by the Air Force, takes off and lands on conventional runways, and the F-35B, the Marine Corps version, is a short-takeoff vertical landing aircraft that can operate off the Navy's amphibious assault ships.
The crash occurred while the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson Strike Group was involved in a high-profile naval exercise with the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group, the USS Essex Amphibious Ready Group, the USS America Amphibious Ready Group and a Japanese Maritime Self Defense helicopter carrier.
He said the crash suggested to him the jet was not using an automatic landing system, digital controls which help limit the number of times the pilot must make corrections to get the plane safely on the deck.
“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. There is an ongoing investigation into both the crash and the unauthorized release of the shipboard video footage,” Cmdr.
Zach Harrell, spokesperson for Commander, Naval Air Forces, said in an email. As the $100 million fighter makes its approach to the vessel, crew can be heard yelling “Wave off, wave off,” the term used for a plane to abort a landing attempt, accelerate and fly around to try again.
But the warning to the pilot comes too late to avoid the crash. This video is the second unauthorized leak of the collision. Less than a week after the crash, video emerged of the plane on approach as did a still image of it floating momentarily on the surface of the sea.
“It’s a really clever piece of software that links up the flight controls [the flaps] and the throttles and also gives the pilot some display so the pilot can monitor the system and fine tweak,” Layton said.
“This is a reasonably new system that came out of the F-35 program.” The footage shows two angles of the incident from separate cameras, and both show the jet on approach to the aircraft carrier. In one close-up view the plane hits the deck, bursts into flames and then spins in front of the camera full frame.
The second angle captures the fiery wreck as it careens along the deck then slides off into the water. The addition of the F-35C to Carrier Air Wing 2 aboard Carl Vinson for its current deployment marks the first time a US carrier has flown with what the Navy calls its “air wing of the future,” which also includes F/A-18E /F fighters, EA-18G electronic warfare aircraft, E-2D airborne early warning aircraft and CMV-22 tilt-rotor transports.
The deployment on the Vinson was the first operational one for the F-35C, which only entered service in 2019. The US Air Force version of the stealth fighter, the F-35A and the Marine Corps version, the F-35B, were put into service earlier.
Of the seven sailors injured, four received medical treatment aboard the carrier while the other three, including the pilot, were medevaced to a facility in Manila, Philippines, and are in stable condition, according to the Navy.
The two strike groups along with a Japanese helicopter destroyer staged a large exercise on Saturday in the Philippine Sea, the part of the Pacific Ocean between Taiwan and the US island territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
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