From JC

I was following up on the still-murky “lost F35” story and came across this headline from BulgarianMilitary.com. Included without comment:

But the big F35 news this week was the release of the 911 call made by a very confused homeowner, a very confused 911 operator, and a Marine pilot, after the pilot parachuted into the homeowner’s backyard.

They called 911.

Not the base, not the pilot’s commanding operator, not the MP’s, and not even any special military recovery number. Why 911? Why hadn’t the pilot’s ejection transponder already scrambled a military response? Why didn’t he use his radio to contact the base? Why didn’t he just wait for the Marines to arrive? He was a mile from the airport. So many questions.

Anyway, for some reason they called 911. The clip, which you can hear below, is pretty hilarious. On the call, as the homeowner and the pilot kept trying to explain that he’d just ejected from a military fighter jet, the poor 911 operator just wasn’t getting it, and who can blame her?

Here’s how the call started:

OPERATOR: 911. What’s the address of the emergency? Cross-talk. Tell me exactly what happened?

HOMEOWNER: I guess we’ve got a pilot at our house and he says he got ejected. He ejected from a plane, so. Could we just see if we could get some, some ambulance please?

OPERATOR: I’m sorry. What happened?

HOMEOWNER: Uh. We got a PILOT. In the HOUSE. And I guess he landed in my backyard, and we’re trying to see if we could get a, um, ambulance to the house.

OPERATOR: Are you with the patient now?

That’s about when the pilot, understandably frustrated with the faltering communications, took the phone himself. “I’m the pilot.” He quickly briefed the details.

The operator, valiantly struggling to wrap her mind around what must have been a totally off-the-flowchart call, asked him, “um, how far did you fall?” The pilot crisply replied, “about 2,000 feet.” She asked, what caused the fall? This question seemed to stymie him a bit. After a brief pause, he answered tersely, “an aircraft failure” which seemed to dampen the conversation. Then — and this must be the very best bit — after an uncomfortable pause, the pilot asked, and I am not making this up, “have there been any reports of a plane crash?”

Or was he even a pilot? Could he have been a scientist riding along on a remote-controlled F35?

The pilot, who told the operator (after she asked) he was 47 years old, said his back hurt and he needed an ambulance. A civilian ambulance. Tell me how that makes any sense.

Listen for yourself. CLIP: Lost F35 911 call (2:14).

Some have suggested the explanation is that the homeowner called 911. But listen to the clip. The pilot was right there. It even sounds like the homeowner had 911 on speaker. Why wouldn’t the pilot just have told the homeowner and the operator that the situation was under control, no emergency, thanks anyway, the military would take it from here? Are pilots trained to chat with civilians on public, recorded lines right after ejecting from their stealth fighter jet?

There’s a lot that could be said about this baffling mystery. It all seems so incompetent that some suspicious observers suspect the whole story is a psyop. What on Earth.