Footage just obtained by a news outlet shows the moment local authorities encountered a Marine pilot who ejected from his F/A-18 fighter jet before it crashed into a mountainside in Washington state earlier this summer.
On June 13, the F/A-18 Hornet slammed into a mountainside in the area near Rimrock Lake, about 55 miles southeast of Seattle, sending up a plume of smoke and igniting a wildfire. The crash itself was captured by campers and posted on social media.
“The unidentified pilot assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, in Miramar, California, is seen with his face bloodied and appearing a little shaken up in the body camera footage released Friday by the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office,” reported ABC, which obtained the body cam footage.
In the video, the aviator approaches deputies with his phone in his hand and 911 on the screen.
“I came over that tree line,” he tells deputies. “I clipped those trees.”
He is asked an inaudible question in a short portion of the video broadcast by the network, but responds, “I’m not sure exactly. I’m a little –” and gestures that he’s a bit disoriented from the ejection.
Fighter pilots generally use the emergency escape procedure as a last resort because they are violently launched out of the cockpit with explosive charges and rocket motors, subjecting the human body to up to a whopping 20Gs, or 20 times the force of Earth’s gravity.
In other parts of the video not broadcast, but reported by ABC, the pilot was asked by a first responder, “What kind of jet is that?”
“That’s an F-18,” he replies. “Well, that was an F-18. We were doing circles over the lake, doing some low-level training. …And then I tucked in, and I’m not sure exactly.”
Commonly just called an “F-18,” the F and A designation stands for “fighter” and “attack,” indicating it can do both air combat and attack a stationary enemy on the ground or at sea as well.
Later, the pilot is seen making a call to someone.
“Hey, buddy, I just crashed,” the pilot says.
In a news release at the time of the incident, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing said the pilot was doing routine training when the F-18 experienced a “non-fatal aviation mishap.”
The cause of the crash is still under investigation, according to ABC.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
