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The best pic I could find so far looked like the wheels were not down and the approach was way long. How many clotshotted chicks can we afford to train at 100 million bucks a lesson? At least that aluminum can of a F35 didn’t do any damage to that 4” thick steel flight deck.
When McLame and his buds tried to sink the Forrestal the crew just swept the junk into the ocean before they got back to Subic. But this time our geniuses want all the junk back so they’re deep fishing for the wreck. If I have it right this is #5 F35 lost since November. whotta performance record. At a glance maybe we should just let the chicoms find this one? Not to pick on the girls but maybe we should let the chicoms train them too? If we could just wreck a few more ships and planes in the South China Sea we could declare victory and focus on our next 6G phones?

That’s 6G-—you know , the ones that will warm your lunch while you drive your Prius with no hands/brains.

The leaked video, which was confirmed to be taken aboard the Navy carrier during the crash, shows the jet approaching the ship (left) when the screen fills with smoke (right) and the violent sound of the engine can be heard just before the video cuts out The US Navy confirmed Friday that a photo and video circulating on social media this week show an F-35C, one of its most advanced fighter aircraft, crash-landing on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and floating in the South China Sea after falling off the carrier. "The ship has assessed that the video and photo covered by media today were taken onboard USS Carl Vinson," Cmdr. Hayley Sims, a 7th Fleet public affairs officer, said Friday. Sims said the images from the carrier were taken "during the crash."

The best pic I could find so far looked like the wheels were not down and the approach was way long

Ran through the video a half dozen times and while I can't argue about the "approach was way long", I will most definitely say at the beginning of the video those wheels were down/locked along with the hook just according to The Book. (The plane looked REAL high all the way in, though)

Once the plane got close in the gear just got into the shadow of wings/aft structure and looked disappeared.

There was some commentary about "knocked the landing gear off" before the bird went into the water....only thing I can guess at is the plane just missed all the arresting gear (aka "boltered") and hit [fill in your best guess] to knock off the gear before it went over the side.

Really bad landing/lost A/C caused by pilot error. Pilot's gender and/or medical condition are beside the point until the Review Board (or whatever they call 'em now) brings up the subject.

Can't imagine this particular pilot's going to be flying anything but a desk from now on, though.