“I think it landed in my garden”: That’s what a South Carolina resident calmly explained to the US emergency call service 911 after a military pilot ejected from his F-35 jet, according to audio material released by the media on Friday American and quoted by AFP.
F-35A Lightning IIPhoto: US Air Force
The case both amused and shocked the population of the United States: on Sunday, a military base in South Carolina appealed to the population to help find a missing F-35 fighter jet. The aircraft is valued at $80 million.
Its pilot ejected and is fine, it added, remaining silent on the “incident” that caused the soldier’s hasty departure.
The pilot was reportedly able to speak to 911 thanks to the resident in question, according to the phone call released by US media on Friday.
The resident first tries to explain this curious situation to a perplexed operator:
“We have a pilot in the house. He says he ejected from the plane. And we just wanted to know if we could please send an ambulance,” says this person.
“Here we go?”, the operator replies.
“We have a pilot. In the house”, repeats the resident. “I think it landed in my garden.”
Then the pilot himself speaks:
“A military plane crashed. I’m the pilot. We have to start rescue operations,” he says.
“I don’t know where the plane is. It might have crashed somewhere. I ejected,” he continued.
When the operator asked him what prompted him to parachute, he said his plane “broke down.”
He also explained that he was fine and just had a sore back.
“I just parachuted in. Could you send an ambulance?” he said, before asking her if she had been informed of a plane crash in the area.
“Not yet,” she replied.
The wreckage of the US Air Force’s flagship F-35B Lightning II was finally found in South Carolina on Monday, about 24 hours after the search began.
The military, “in close coordination with local authorities, discovered a debris site in Williamsburg County, South Carolina,” Charleston Base wrote on the X Network (formerly Twitter).
The discovery of the state-of-the-art stealth military jet – which costs about $80 million apiece – ends a massive search by US authorities since Sunday afternoon.
They had appealed to the residents of the area to help them locate the precious wreck, causing a series of ironies on the Internet.
