Photo surfaces of F-35 that crashed into the South China Sea after a 'landing mishap' on a US Navy aircraft carrier

• A photo and video of the F-35 that crashed in the South China Sea this week have appeared online.
• The US Navy said the photo and video were taken by someone on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.

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."

CNN first reported the Navy's confirmation of the imagery authenticity.

The photo from the incident first appeared on Thursday on Reddit and shows an F-35 floating on the surface of the water with the cockpit canopy open. The Navy told Insider in an earlier statement that it was unable to confirm the authenticity of this photo, but that has since changed.

A video surfaced Friday showing an F-35 approaching the carrier, but it cuts off before the jet's crash-landing.

A Pacific Fleet spokesperson told Insider that although the Navy has determined that the photo was taken from the Carl Vinson, it remains unclear if it has been manipulated in any way.

'Landing mishap'

The US Navy revealed Monday afternoon that an F-35C Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, a naval variant designed and built specifically for carrier operations, experienced a "landing mishap" during routine flight operations in the South China Sea, forcing the pilot to eject.

Seven sailors were injured in the incident, which saw the jet damage the flight deck, though only superficially, before crashing into the South China Sea, where it now awaits recovery operations.

The Navy told Insider this week that it is working on plans to recover the fifth-generation fighter, which experts and analysts have said China might try to get its hands on if the US failed to get it back.

Mark Cancian, a senior advisor for the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Navy Times that "this is our most sophisticated aircraft," noting that "it has all kinds of electronics onboard that our adversaries would love to get a hold of."

"We need to make sure they don't," he added.

Responding to those particular concerns, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday that it has "no interest in their aircraft."

The Navy said in its latest statement that "there is an ongoing investigation of the incident," though it is unclear if that referred to just the accident or the imagery leak as well.

This week's incident follows another in November 2021 in which a British pilot flying an F-35B, a short-takeoff/vertical landing variant, had to eject from the aircraft during takeoff while the British Royal Navy's flagship carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth conducted flight operations in the Mediterranean.

The mishap aircraft, which slipped off the flight deck into the ocean, was pulled from the sea in December amid reported concerns about the Russians possibly trying to recover the plane.