A British-owned F-35 fighter jet crashed into the Mediterranean Sea Wednesday after it failed to successfully launch from the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. The UK Defense Ministry said the pilot was safe as he was able to eject from the airplane before it crashed.
UK officials said they had already launched an investigation into the incident. The crash reportedly occurred when the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm was conducting routine flight operations.
The aircraft that had crashed was an F-35B single-engine jet, which is a short take-off vertical landing version of the original F-35 jet developed by the U.S. Each aircraft has a price tag of about $115 million.
The crash occurred in the final stages of the HMS Queen Elizabeth's mission, which led the Carrier Strike Group 21. The mission had taken the carrier as far as Japan and South Korea to engage in drills with allies and partners as the Royal Navy attempted to expand its influence in the region.
The strike group's departure from the UK in the spring was hailed by the British Ministry of Defense as the biggest concentration of maritime and air power to leave British shores in a generation. The strike group included U.S. and Dutch warships, and ten U.S. Marine Corps F-35s, and eight British stealth fighters operating off the HMS Queen Elizabeth.
The F-35 jets that were being used aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth conducted flyby combat missions over the Middle East in June. It was also the aircraft carrier's first combat mission in more than a decade.
The 35 jets were first used by the UK in 2019. They were used to conduct airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. The planes were conducting the mission from the Royal Air Force's base on the island of Cyprus.
The UK is currently planning to purchase 138 additional F-35 jets from Lockheed Martin, making it the third-largest operator of the particular stealth aircraft behind the U.S. and Japan.
Since the jets had been sold and used in the U.S. and other countries, there had been multiple incidents of accidental crashes. The first crash happened in September 2018 when an F-35B operated by the U.S. Marine Corps crashed in South Carolina.
In April 2019, a Japan-owned F-35A fighter jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean just north of the Japanese coast - killing its pilot. The Japanese Defense Ministry attributed the crash to human error, claiming that the pilot was experiencing spatial disorientation. In May 2020, an F-35A crashed in Florida during a routine training exercise. The pilot survived after he successfully ejected from the aircraft before it crashed.
