Updated 00:54 | Published 00:53
The American fighter plane disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Late Monday night, a two-day no-fly order was issued to all Marine Corps pilots.
The decision applies both in the United States and abroad.
The state-of-the-art fighter plane F-35 costs almost a billion kroner each and is built with stealth technology to be able to go under the radar.
It seems to have worked a little too well in South Carolina on Sunday. During a training flight from Joint Base Charleston, the pilot ejected from an F-35. He was found unharmed – but not the plane.
On Monday afternoon, Swedish time, the US military issued a search warrant and asked the public for help in finding it.
For a few hours, base management feared the aircraft might still be in the air because it was being controlled by the autopilot when the pilot ejected.
That statement was later retracted and the search for the presumed wreck concentrated on an area surrounding two lakes north of the city of North Charleston.
Unclear reason: “A mishap”
The military has not gone into any further details about the disappearance other than to call it “a mishap”. Why the pilot ejected is as unclear as the reason why the plane could not be tracked via the transponder.
– It didn’t work for some reason. “We have not yet been able to determine why,” said Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman for Joint Base Charleston. according to the Washington Post.
The flight mystery quickly became the subject of political attacks.
– How the hell can you lose an F-35? Why is there no tracking equipment? And we’re asking the public to, what, find a jet and turn it in? said Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace.
Field of wreckage found
During the night towards Tuesday, information came that the aircraft had been found.
Joint Base Charleston signed X (formerly Twitter) that “a field of wreckage” had been located in Williamsburg county, about a two-hour flight from the base.
A few hours earlier, General Eric Smith, the commander in chief of the Marine Corps, had issued a sort of soft no-fly order.
All Marine Corps pilots—both in the United States and abroad—must ground their planes for two days. Urgent missions may still be performed, but the two-day break must be implemented sometime during the week.
“During the security outage, aviation officers will lead discussions with their Marines and focus on the basics of flight safety, ground safety, maintenance and flight procedures,” the Pentagon said in a statement reported by NBC News.
Two previous crashes
In the past month alone, two more plane crashes have hit the United States Marine Corps. The 25th of August crashed an F-18 during training in San Diego. The pilot died. Two days later, three more Marines were killed when an MV-22B Osprey helicopter crashed on an island off Australia.
The Pentagon states, according to NBC News, that the order to suspend flights is also rooted in these two events.