COLUMBIA, S.C. — A Navy investigation has accused the pilot of an advanced fighter jet of ejecting from the plane when he didn’t need to, causing the F-35 to fly unmanned for 11 minutes before crashing in rural South Carolina last year.

Military officials were unable to find the plane or its wreckage for more than 24 hours, a difficult situation that the investigative report released Thursday attributes to the $100 million plane’s stealth technology as well as a transponder that did not work and to the plane flying at low altitude with a system that automatically stabilizes the flight without the control of the pilot.

The jet suffered multiple system failures as the pilot attempted to land at Joint Base Charleston in heavy rain in September 2023 after a 50-minute training flight with another F-35.

Lightning was reported nearby and the plane experienced an “electrical event” that caused malfunctions in its radios, transponders and air navigation system. The pilot’s helmet display also turned on and off three times. The exact nature of what happened was obscured in the report released to the public.

The pilot then stated that he had no reference to where he was relative to the ground and did not know what instruments he could trust, so he decided to eject.

But Navy investigators determined there was no need to abandon the plane because its computer still controlled its flight, as evidenced by the fact that the plane remained in the air for more than 60 miles ( 100 kilometers) and 11 minutes without a driver.

The backup instruments were still providing accurate data and the backup radio was still at least partially functioning, according to the report.

The report says investigators are not sure what data the pilot was receiving or what he saw in his helmet just before and when he ejected because the crash recorder did not record this information.

The 47-year-old pilot survived the crash on September 17, 2023, by parachuting into the backyard of a North Charleston home and asking the stunned homeowner to call 911.

He told the operator that his back hurt, but was otherwise fine. The pilot was not identified in the roughly 400, sometimes heavily redacted, pages released by the Marine Corps about the crash.

Parts of the report are also carefully written. Investigators wrote that the aircraft was difficult to find and that “the loss of positive contact could also be partially attributed to the F-35B’s low-observable technology.”

The missing plane caused a media storm. Memes put pictures of F-35s on posters and missing milk cartons. The Marines tried to carefully explain how a $100 million plane with many classified components could disappear.

The strangeness of the accident was reflected in the highly jargoned military reports. A situation report from the afternoon following the accident lists dozens of priorities: “1.A.1 Locate the missing F-35 aircraft. »

The plane crashed in rural Williamsburg County. It took 17 days to collect and examine the wreckage and clean up spilled fuel and other hazards from the woods, at a cost of more than $2.1 million, according to the report.