Britain and America are currently engaged in operations to salvage an F-35B which ditched into the ocean after taking off from HMS Queen Elizabeth.

It is understood that while the point at which the jet entered the sea is known, the aircraft’s wings would have made it glide underwater for a reasonable distance before settling to the bottom of the sea bed.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:

“There is an ongoing operation to recover the F-35 jet. I am pleased that our pilot is safe and well. We will investigate what happened.”

According to a report in The Times, Britain has asked the United States to help due to the close proximity of American salvage equipment based in Spain.

F-35 operations are now continuing onboard British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth after one of the jets crashed into the sea after taking off from the ship last week.

One of the carrier’s F-35B fighters, from 617 Squadron, crashed during operations in the Mediterranean last week. The pilot was able to eject safely.

F-35 operations continue from British aircraft carrier after crash

The Ministry of Defence said:

“A British F35 pilot from HMS Queen Elizabeth ejected during routine flying operations in the Mediterranean this morning. The pilot has been safely returned to the ship and an investigation has begun, so it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.”

A number of British and American F-35 jets are based on HMS Queen Elizabeth. The aircraft carrier and her strike group are on the return leg of a global deployment.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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41 COMMENTS

  1. They haven’t grounded the fleet which is interesting. Pilot error possibly or something reported that they didn’t feel was a major technical issue?

  3. Defence chiefs should be asking themselves, what would we do differently had this happened in the South China Sea instead of the Med. Request support from Allies I suppose.
    It would be handy to have a containerised underwater recovery system as one of the potential solutions for the upcoming T26/31 mission bays. But then you would also need a “connector” from sea-surface-to-ship in recovering a jet lifted from the sea floor. A dedicated crane platform perhaps? Any RFA ships out there do anything like that?
    M@

    • This is why we still need Dilligence. During the 1960s we had HMS Triumph as a maintenance / repair / recovery ship for the Far East (at Singapore) as well as RFA Salvage Tugs and then rediscovered that need during the Falklands and bought RFA Dilligence (after she was taken up from trade for the conflict). HMS Challenger was also commissioned (very briefly) at the end of the ’80s for underwater ops, and two new salvage tugs cancelled too. Here we are again realising why you need support, salvage and maintenance vessels if you are going to deploy on enduring blue water operations.

      • Thanks for that James! Just been reading up on Diligence after seeing your post, fascinating ship. The “Floating Swiss Army knife”. After this incident, it should highlight that we need support vessels like this during any carrier group tasking.
        M@

      • It’s as if the government decided some years ago that, being part of NATO, the UK does not really need certain ships and other kit because our allies will always help out if problems arise. When the Cameron government suddenly withdrew and scrapped the Nimrod MR2s, it was expected that the US, Norway and even France would provide maritime patrol cover around the British Isles, until a decision was made on a replacement.

        • We’ve been through a period of force reduction, as a result of the financial crisis and a perception that the threat had receeded after the re-enforced brigade-sized deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan ended a decade ago. Its always the peripheral capabilites that go first when the axe is wielded – those you don’t need to use everyday. Problem is when you need them you really, really need them. Same with MPA and AWACS.

  4. The med is about 2 miles deep in most places; surely it has been crushed by the water pressure? I guess they still need to rescue the electronics before someone else does though. It will probably look more like a large oxo cube when they do get it up.

    • The need to rescue as much as possible, especially the aircraft’s skin material. As this uses embedded radar absorbent material (RAM). If a third party gets their hands on this, they will be able to test its radar attenuation capabilities and work out when their radars will be able to detect the F35.

    • I doubt the air frame is airtight, water will just free flood most spaces. The only parts that might suffer this will be the fuel tanks.

    • It won’t be crused by water pressure. The air rcra t has many opei (engine inlets being huge examples) that permit pressure equalization

  5. To begin to see the reason why this is so important. I wonder what the depth was?

     “The Defense Ministry is studying (the parts), but at this point, the all-important memory (of the flight data recorder) has not been recovered.”
    Iwaya also noted that the retrieved part of the flight data recorder was heavily damaged.

    As a result, it is unlikely to help determine the cause of the crash, which remains unknown.

    “Because Russia and China are competing with the United States to develop an advanced fighter jet, they would do anything to get their hands on F-35A technological information,” a high-ranking JASDF officer told The Asahi Shimbun. “It is possible to extract secret information even from a single part of a small fragment.”

    https://thediplomat.com/2019/05/japan-recovers-parts-of-crashed-f-35as-flight-data-recorder/

  6. A little-known fact is that every F35B is marked with the code ‘F35B’ in a top-secret location. When it’s submerged, parts of the ‘B’ wash away, turning it into a kind of ‘S’. This denotes that the F35 has self-identified as the top-secret ‘S’ (submersible) variant.

  7. Bird strike! That lump would need every bit of power to get clear of the deck. A bird strike is not good for any single-engine aircraft on take-off, let alone one that also has a lift fan.

  8. The Ministry of Defence has always been massively incompetent but to have no support ships in place to recover downed aircraft, no matter how unlikely the scenario may be, is just pathetic, and again, utterly humiliating to have to ask the Americans for help.

  9. There is no reason to have there own salvage ship that is hardly ever used with no real training for the crew, when there are lots of civilian deep sea diving vessels that have expert crews and built for the purpose and scattered around the world
    There are many things the navy would have on its wish list but i doubt a salvage ship would be high on its list

    • Right…. Let’s have civilian vessels trying to recover an extremely valuable military jet aircraft, are you being serious? There is a reason they went straight to the US for help.

      Also, Ships can be multi-purpose, now we are back to carrier operations, having such capability isn’t a bad idea.

      • If you need a specific Capability, as in this case you use whatever suitable assets are available – be it Military ( your own or provided by your Allies ) or Civilian,beggars can’t be choosers in these situations.

      • Why not?, the American’s asked and then tasked foreign private salvage companies to recover the F35 that went down in the sea off Japan in 2019.
        It’s also worth noting that civilians build these aircraft too,so its not like civilians don’t ever handle these aircraft.
        The UK had, and has, the ability to recover the UK F35, but the American’s recovery assets were far closer, so why not utilize that asset, isn’t that the whole point of NATO.
        I’m sure we, and every other serious navy would love a fleet of 100 support ships to accompany every war ship, carrying everything from corn plasters, to interplanetary defense lasers in case of a suprise Martian attack on said warship, you know, just to cover all eventualities, one of those support vessels could even be a deep sea salvage vessel, maybe have two, in case one breaks, as on average the UK navy needs to recover an aircraft from the deep ocean once every 37 years, so its good to be over prepared lol 😉

    • The Royal Navy Auxiliary service had a few, although no idea if they Serco kept them after privatization. Not sure if they ever had any stationed at the rock though and I highly doubt they’ve ever been based in Cyprus so we’d have still asked for local help unless we wanted to wait a couple of months…

      They were still civilian vessels and wouldn’t have been following round a carrier group.

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