The F-35 chose freedom. The machine without a pilot is missing and is being sought | News from around the world

The search continues in South Carolina, in the Charleston area. The military says that based on the plane’s last known position, its direction of flight and information obtained from civilian airspace control, it most likely crashed somewhere in the area of ​​two large lakes north of the city, Marion and Moultrie. The Charleston base managing the incident is asking civilians to report helpful information by phone.

No details of the failure that led to this unusual situation were provided. A Marine Corps F-35B was conducting some sort of training flight in tandem with another such aircraft. Due to an unspecified “mishap”, the pilot of the plane had to eject over Charleston, near the city’s main civilian airport. He landed on a small residential street and was not seriously injured. It happened around 2 p.m. local time on Sunday. That’s around 8 p.m. Polish time. A large storm front was passing over the Charleston area at the time.

Local television WLTX claims, citing information from the military, that the pilot activated some type of autopilot before ejection. Why he did this and why he evacuated from the machine, which was apparently capable of further controlled flight, is unknown. The now missing F-35B is surely somewhere on the ground or underwater a long time ago, because the fuel supply is not enough for more than half a day of flight. From the lack of reports from civilians, it can be concluded that it crashed without witnesses somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

Similar incidents have occurred in history. The most famous one began in Poland in 1989. Moments after taking off from the Bagicz airport near Kołobrzeg, the pilot of the Soviet MiG-23 fighter noticed that the engine was rapidly losing power. He was convinced that he was on the verge of shutting down, which at an altitude of about a hundred meters and at low speed meant certain disaster. Since the Baltic Sea was already in front of him, Colonel Nikolai Skuridin decided to catapult. However, after the pilot left, the plane regained power. The engine began to operate normally, the stabilization system took control of the situation and the aircraft began to climb, heading west. It flew over the GDR and over the Federal Republic of Germany, where it was intercepted by NATO fighters. However, no decision was made to shoot it down. Finally, over the border of Belgium and Germany, after less than 70 minutes of flight, the plane ran out of fuel and began to glide stably, eventually falling on the Belgian town of Kortrijk. Unfortunately, the MiG-23 hit a residential house perfectly and killed a 19-year-old man. The cause of the failure turned out to be corrosion on the cable contacts in the engine control system.

The now lost F-35B is one of the most modern combat aircraft in the world. A fifth-generation machine built using stealth technology and with great emphasis on advanced electronics that give the pilot excellent orientation in the surroundings. The letter “B” denotes a version capable of vertical take-off and landing, intended mainly for the US Marine Corps. Lockheed Martin has already built almost a thousand F-35s for the needs of the US military and a number of foreign customers. So far, eight have crashed in different versions and in different countries. The currently missing person will most likely be the ninth.