South Carolina man goes viral for imitating screeching sound of lost military jet
He heard the lost F-35 military jet falling from the sky, but the world heard his screeching and whistling instead.
Randolph White, a 72-year-old Charleston-area retiree, has gone viral after an interview featuring his animated impression of a jet falling from the sky was broadcast by a local NBC news affiliate and circulated on social media platforms this week.
In an interview published Tuesday, White told the Charleston-based WCBD News 2 broadcaster he was in the bathroom “taking a shave,” when all of a sudden he heard a loud sound, “between a screech and a whistle.” He then proceeded to imitate the sound of the jet, producing a long, high pitched squeal or yell that went on for several seconds.
“I said, ‘What in the world is this?’ And I heard a BOOM, and my whole house shook,” White went on to say.
White didn’t know what it was and explained he thought it may have been a “meteorite” coming from “outer space or something.”
The broadcaster said White had retired from his job at the paper mill in Georgetown roughly 10 years ago. White said he loved living about 2 miles from where he grew up in a house with his wife in a rural area of Williamsburg County.
Normally it’s pretty quiet, the News 2 broadcaster explained about White’s rural house. Until that day, at least.
People are circulating the viral video of White’s interview on multiple social media platforms, including X and TikTok, and have started to use the hashtags #randolphforpresident #randolphfoundthejet and #onlyinthesouth.
The puzzling missing jet incident is under scrutiny by Pentagon and military officials after a pilot from Beaufort’s Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) ejected from an F-35B Lightning II fighter jet during a “mishap” Sunday afternoon, The Island Packet reported.
The unpiloted aircraft was missing for more than 24 hours before its wreckage was found Monday evening in rural Williamsburg County, about two hours northeast of Joint Base Charleston.
The Associated Press reported it’s the the third military event documented as a “Class-A mishap” — one causing more than $2.5 million in damage, a Department of Defense aircraft is destroyed, or someone dies or is permanently disabled — over the past six weeks.
