Marines under fire for flying $80M F-35 over SC during thunderstorm when report shows jets CAN'T handle storms: Pilot ejected due to 'bad weather' before jet 'flipped', flew 100ft above trees in 'zombie mode' and crashed in field

A F-35 jet could have crashed on Sunday due to poor weather in South Carolina, new audio suggests - as questions mount as to why the disastrous training exercise was allowed to proceed.

The F-35B Lightning II which the unnamed Marine pilot was flying is believed to be at risk of malfunctions if it flies in thunderstorms, according to a Forbes investigation in November.

Its sister jet, the F-35A, is more severely affected and cannot fly within 25 miles of lightning

he issue lies within the F-35's OBIGGS (Onboard Inert Gas Generation) system, which pumps nitrogen-enriched air into its fuel tanks to inert them, preventing the aircraft from exploding if it is struck by lightning.

'F-35B and C variants have some of the same OBIGGS issues as the F-35A, but have been able to alleviate operational impacts,' said Chief Petty Officer Matthew Olay, spokesman for the F-35 Joint Program Office, in an email to Forbes last year.

Audio from Sunday's crash shows the pilot telling emergency responders, after ejecting, that he 'lost it in the weather'.

We were driving east to Champaign,Il one Sunday morning and a very impressive roll cloud came by. A family was planning on dropping their daughter off in Florida at a week long volley ball camp leaving from Rantoul, about 10 miles north. Don’t know the plane, but I had the impression that it was some kind of powerful single engine or maybe even a two engine. They left the runway about a minute or two too late and that was the end of them. Tore them right out of the sky.

Don’t fly anything in or near a roll cloud.

I am sure that a roll cloud at 100 ft would be kind of disconcerting to any pilot.

Time lapse weather radar of that area during the flight time mignt be interesting.

I was selling Auto Parts when it came on to the market. I was chastised by the Owners of the store (privately owned and I grew up with the youngest one, so everyone knew each other) and I had only ordered 2 cases of it to start with and see how the sales went. Most of the Owners didn’t think it would sell much less work as claimed.

Well both cases sold out in less than 2 weeks and Customers came back for more. (not the first item or time I proved to be correct on things)

The best one was when they didn’t want to take Credit Cards. I was losing several Big Ticket sales every week because of that decision. I’m talking Engine Rebuild parts to the tune of $500-$1000 per invoice, Brake Systems: master
cylinders, wheel cylinders, calipers or rebuild kits, pads, shoes, fluid again Hundreds of $$$$$ !!! I finally got with the 51% Owner one day on the phone when He called to check on things. I asked if we were ever going to take Credit Cards. He said not really because the banks wanted (at that time) 2-3% of the sale. (I’m a high school dropout BTW and this Owner was a Private Attorney with his own Practice for Corporate Clients) I told him that 98 or 97 % of something is better than 100% of NOTHING.

After about 20 seconds of silence He said “yeah You’re right but I never looked at it that way.”

We got CC Machines the next week. And this was back in the day of the machine being the card imprinter type and everything was done by hand and calling in to check if there was enough limit on the card at the time.

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