The Sound Guy
Pursuit Driver
Glad the ChiComs won't get their hands on it. Be interesting to see if the fail safe systems worked correctly.
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Navy’s Crashed F-35C Recovered From The Bottom Of The South China Sea
Recovery of the jet after its carrier landing mishap allays fears that it could have fallen into the wrong hands.
The U.S. Navy has retrieved the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter that was lost in a landing accident aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) earlier this year from the South China Sea. The service recovered the jet after bringing it up from a depth of around 12,400 feet. You can read our original coverage of the mishap here.
The aircraft was recovered yesterday by the U.S. 7th Fleet’s Task Force 75, which overseas diving and salvage units and other expeditionary capabilities within its area of responsibility, and Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA) Supervisor of Salvage and Diving (SUPSALV). The combined team was on board the commercially owned diving support construction vessel (DSCV) Picasso. That vessel had left Okinawa on February 23 to head to the crash site.
According to USNI News, the location of the salvage operation may have been around 170 miles west of the Philippine island of Luzon, based on a notice to mariners that was issued by the Japan Coast Guard. The Navy, for its part, has not announced any details of the location.
For the recovery effort itself, the team employed a Cable-controlled Undersea Recovery Vehicle 21, or CURV-21, a tethered remotely operated vehicle (ROV) normally used to survey the seabed. The CURV-21 can also carry sonar and cameras to help locate objects of interest and in this instance, it attached specialized rigging and lift lines to the jet.