It's early April 2019 and a flight of four Japanese Self-Defense Forces F-35s take off
for a routine training flight.
At the lead is an experienced pilot with 3,200 hours of total flight time and 60 hours with
the cutting-edge fighter.
After a brief flight though, the lead officer signals an abort to the training exercise
and then mysteriously vanishes from radar.
But how in the world does an F-35, the most advanced plane in the world, go missing?
The weather that day had been perfect for flying, warm and sunny with few clouds in
the sky.
As a close ally of the United States, Japan has been a partner in the F-35 program and
one of the few nations cleared for sale of the state-of-the-art fighter jet.
In anticipation of a purchase of almost two hundred aircraft, Japanese pilots had begun
flying F-35s shipped over from the United States in order to familiarize themselves
with the machine and its technology.
What was just another routine training flight however ended in tragedy and mystery when
the flight's lead suddenly disappeared.
After only twenty eight minutes in the air, the flight's lead sent out a single signal
to the rest of his pilots, ordering an abort to the exercise.
Shortly after the F-35 simply disappeared from radar, its identification beacon was
either turned off or began malfunctioning.
With the beacon not operational, the F-35's stealth features would've made it difficult
to track, and the last thing radar operators knew was that the plane was headed down and
looked to be in serious trouble.
While hard data is all but impossible to ascertain given the extreme secrecy behind the aircraft,
investigators were hoping to find clues as to what happened from the classified communications
and data sharing system on board the jet.
What is known is that the pilot did not signal for help, and it's believed that he did not
eject- or if he did, he never activated a rescue beacon, which only adds even more mystery
to the entire event.
The aircraft crashed just north of the main Japanese island, in waters almost 5,000 feet
(1,500 meters) deep, which would make recovery of its components very difficult.
An initial search for the craft involved the Japanese navy, though they worked in close
cooperation with the US military to include secretive US high altitude reconnaissance
planes.
Working in conjunction, the search effort discovered pieces of the plane's left and
right rudders two hours after it went down, but further wreckage would take weeks to locate.
The US chartered a civilian deep sea diving support vessel, the Van Gogh, and dispatched
a remotely operated vehicle to aid in the undersea search.
With a maximum depth of 20,000 feet (9,000 meters) there's few places in the ocean the
ROV can't go.
The Japanese quickly dispatched the Kaimei, a deep sea scientific survey ship along with
their own ROVs.
The immediate concern was that China or Russia would be able to locate the wreckage first,
and plunder the secrets of the high-tech aircraft.
The US was adamant however that there was no chance that either nation would be able
to find the jet first, and given its stealth characteristics and the proximity to US and
Japanese forces when it went down, it does seem likely that neither China or Russia would
have had the time to find the jet before American and Japanese assets reached the area.
However fears of plundering military secrets from wreckage at the bottom of the sea are
not completely unfounded, as the US Navy famously lifted up half of a destroyed Soviet nuclear
sub during the Cold War, keeping the entire operation a secret and recovering several
manuals and two nuclear torpedoes- all without Soviet knowledge.
If that were to happen here, it could catapult both the Russian and Chinese 5th generation
fighter programs by reverse engineering American technology.
While both nations are developing stealth fighters, it is widely believed that neither
the Chinese or Russian planes will ultimately be as capable as the F-35, although both will
be an impressive effort for nations with very little experience building stealth aircraft.
Given the fact that it took a month to recover part of the flight data recorder and cockpit
from the bottom of the sea though, it's highly unlikely that China or Russia would have any
better luck in locating the other missing wreckage, and for their part the US and Japan
have both officially stopped looking.
The contents of the flight data recorder are naturally, classified, though what is known
is that large parts of the information it contains is missing due to damage.
This implies a catastrophic crash into the ocean, but what is stranger is the fact that
the pilot never seemed to call for help or indicate distress, aside from signaling an
abort to the exercise.
So what could have caused the crash?
Perhaps there was a problem with the oxygen delivery system similar to what plagued the
early F-22s, which caused dizziness and even blackouts among American pilots.
If the pilot had experienced issues with his oxygen delivery system, he could very well
have gotten extremely confused, or outright blacked out- that would explain the lack of
radio communications as the plane plummeted to its doom.
However the F-22 oxygen system issues were well documented across several aircraft, and
no such problem has been made known about the F-35, so it's highly unlikely that this
was the case.
Another theory is that the plane was purposefully downed by a pre-positioned Chinese or Russian
surface or aerial asset.
Perhaps the plane was blasted by an electromagnetic weapon which would have caused a loss of radio
communications, and potentially loss of control of the aircraft.
Both China and Russia would have strong incentive to get their hands on an F-35, even if it
was a crashed one, in order to plunder the secrets of its construction and materials.
This too is unlikely though, as the F-35 is hardened against EMPs and would have required
a very powerful blast of electromagnetic energy to seriously damage the craft.
Even then its sensitive onboard radars would have easily detected another plane or even
drone in the area, and the other three flight members would have definitely detected the
discharge of a powerful electromagnetic weapon.
If a traditional kinetic weapon such as a missile was used, there's simply no way that
the F-35's missile defense systems wouldn't have reacted, and even that wouldn't explain
the complete lack of communications.
The last theory as to the cause of the crash is probably our favorite, and one we're not
surprised to hear about at all.
This theory which is currently making the rounds on the internet speculates that aliens
disabled the aircraft either by accident or on purpose.
The thinking is that the F-35 presents one of the most advanced fighter aircraft in the
human arsenal, and perhaps the aliens were testing their ability to knock one out of
the sky in case of conflict.
Or perhaps the aliens are intergalactic klutzes and Space Cadet First Class Myxoblorp accidentally
leaned on the death ray cannon's firing mechanism and blasted the fighter jet to smithereens.
In that case Japan is definitely owed reparations.
In the case that the plane was blasted out of the sky because of the threat it might
represent, well then we'd have to be dealing with pretty unimaginative aliens, as no species
that can cross the galaxy should be afraid of an air-breathing fighter jet that can't
even leave the atmosphere.
If they truly wanted to destroy us it would be as easy as sitting in orbit and hurling
large rocks down onto our heads.
Whatever happened to the F-35 will probably remain a mystery given how little evidence
is publicly available given the extremely classified nature of the F-35 program.
Sadly what ultimately happened is likely only known to a few select American and Japanese
officials, but we here at The Infographics Show are confident that it was in fact Myxoblorp
who accidentally blasted the jet to pieces.
He's always been an intergalactic klutz.
If you liked this video, watch our other video: US F-35 vs Russian Su-35 Fighter Jet - Which
Would Win?
And as always if you enjoyed this video don't forget to Like, Share, and Subscribe for more
great content.