The debris of the F-35B fighter jet was found a day after authorities asked locals to help in searching wreckage from the elusive warplane after a pilot ejected from the aircraft for unrevealed causes, the US military said.
According to the Marine Corps’s Joint Base Charleston, the debris field from the F-35B Lightning II jet that went misplaced on Sunday afternoon was found on Monday in South Carolina’s rural Williamsburg County.
The base said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, “Personnel from Joint Base Charleston and @MCASBeaufortSC, in close coordination with local authorities, have located a debris field in Williamsburg County. The debris was discovered two hours northeast of JB Charleston.”
The debris was found about two hours northeast of the Marine base and locals were being requested to stay clear of the area.
In another post on X, the base said, “Members of the community should avoid the area as the recovery team secures the debris field. We are transferring incident command to the USMC [US Marine Corps] this evening, as they begin the recovery process.”
Authorities had been locating the jet since the pilot, whose name has not been disclosed, parachuted to safeness into a North Charleston neighborhood at about 2 pm (18:00 GMT) on Sunday and the jet continued flying in what some called a “zombie state”.
According to a Marine Corps announcement the loss of the F-35 was the third event recorded as a “Class-A mishap” over the past six weeks.
Such incidents involve damages that surpass an expense of $2.5m or more when a Department of Defense jet is destroyed, or somebody passes or is permanently disabled.
Exactly what occurred that caused the loss of the F-35 is under probe.
