A retired paper mill worker who heard the missing F-35 plane crash near his home has recreated the sound it made in a hilarious TV appearance.
Randolph White, 72, described the sound as “between a screech and a whistle” and then launched into a screeching sound to help viewers understand.
He was shaving in his bathroom when the $100 million fighter jet crashed near his rural Williamsburg County home Sunday afternoon.
The pilot was able to eject, but the whereabouts of the missing aircraft were unclear, leading to a frantic 28-hour search. It wasn’t until the next night, as helicopters flew overhead, that White learned the screeching sound was coming from a missing plane.
‘I was in the bathroom, shaving, and I heard a screech. Between a screech and a whistle,” the retired paper mill worker told Fox 59. “I said, what the hell is this? And I heard a bang! Then my whole house shook.”
Randolph White, 72, described the strange noise he heard from his Williamsburg County home Sunday afternoon
The $100 million fighter plane crashed in a field 80 miles from the base after a frantic 28-hour search
White did not notify authorities at the time because he had no idea what the noise was, he added.
“The first thought that came to my mind… I said, well, did a meteorite come from space or something?
‘And I said: if it is an airplane, it must be reported, because that thing just flew too low. I didn’t think about it further. “I knew it was low because my house was quite sturdy and it was shaking,” he told the local newspaper.
The next night, White saw helicopters flying over the area as they searched for the missing plane, but he thought they were looking for something else.
“Someone must have robbed a bank… Killed some people or whatever. So I walked over and they told me it was about the plane,” he said.
More questions than answers remained Tuesday about how an F-35B Joint Strike Fighter ended up leaving a debris field described as “extensive” by the local sheriff’s department.
Aerial footage showed debris in a grove next to the field, where trees had fallen. The field had a large area of blackened scorched earth.
It is not known whether locals informed the military about the crash, which did not appear to have occurred in a remote area.
Officials closed about a mile of the road indefinitely as they continued to search rural Williamsburg County for wreckage. Residents were asked to avoid the area while a recovery team worked to secure it.
The Navy pilot of the F-35B Lightning II took off from Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, on Sunday, but an unexplained problem forced him to eject.
The plane was flying with another jet, which returned to base after the accident instead of following the pilotless plane.
The pilot “experienced a malfunction and was forced to eject” on Sunday at an altitude of about 1,000 feet, just a mile north of Charleston International Airport, according to a situation report provided to AP by the Marine Corps official.
Military officials appealed in online messages on Sunday for all the public’s help in locating the plane
“Not sure where his plane crashed, said he just lost it to weather,” someone can be heard saying about the pilot on audio during a Charleston County Emergency Medical Services call shared Tuesday by a local meteorologist .
The pilot, who has not been identified by the Marine Corps, suffered no serious injuries and has been released from the hospital.
The Pentagon is facing pressing questions about how it lost an $80 million plane that was eventually recovered in a field just 80 miles from the base after a frantic 28-hour search.
More questions than answers remained Tuesday about how an F-35B Joint Strike Fighter ended up leaving a debris field described as “extensive” by the local sheriff’s department.
Officials closed about a mile of the road indefinitely as they continued to search rural Williamsburg County for wreckage. Residents were asked to avoid the area while a recovery team worked to secure it.
Federal, state and local officials worked Sunday to locate the plane, and the military appealed to the public for help finding the plane, which is built to evade detection.
Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman for Joint Base Charleston, told NBC News that the plane was flying in autopilot mode when the pilot ejected.
Huggins told The Washington Post on Sunday that the fighter jet “has different coatings and different designs that make it more difficult to detect than a normal aircraft.” He added that the plane’s transponder was not working for an unknown reason.
It forced the base to issue a humiliating appeal for help finding the plane and even launched a hotline for tips, which was mercilessly mocked online. “So that’s why we put out the public request for help,” Huggins said.
According to Joint Base Charleston, Huggins would no longer answer questions Monday because the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing had taken the lead on communications regarding the accident. The 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing said an “investigation was ongoing” and would not share further details.
The aircraft is among the U.S. Department of Defense’s most expensive weapons system program, according to a May 2023 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. According to the report, the Defense Department is considering options to modernize the engine, and the “overloaded” cooling system requires the engine to operate “beyond design parameters.”
Former Marine Dan Grazier, who works at a defense watchdog and warned for years about safety problems with the F-35, said a software glitch or a cyberattack could have caused the missing plane to malfunction.
He told DailyMail.com: ‘There are thousands of penetration points, weak spots across the enterprise where a hacker could gain access to the software.’
The Marine Corps announced Monday it would suspend aviation operations for two days after the fighter jet crash.
