Old footage resurfaced with false claim it shows 'US military helicopter crash in April 2023'

"The US military intruded into our South China Sea, [where] a helicopter fell into the ocean after its left rear wheel got caught on the metal railing on the aircraft carrier," reads a post on Weibo published on April 22, 2023 written in simplified Chinese.

The accompanying 29-second video was viewed more than 70,000 times. It shows a helicopter falling into the ocean after failing to land properly on the deck of a ship.

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Screenshot of the false post, captured on May 1, 2023

The claim circulated as the United States and the Philippines held a two-week joint military exercise from April 11 to 26 in the South China Sea to counter Beijing's growing assertiveness in the region (archived link).

China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea despite an international court ruling that the assertion has no legal basis.

Led by the United States, Western militaries regularly conduct "freedom of navigation operations" with warships and aircraft to assert the international status of regional waterways, including in the South China Sea.

The same video was shared alongside similar false claims on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin.

While some users questioned the validity of the claim, others were misled.

One wrote: "Looks like they have a guilty conscience for intruding into our South China Sea, they don't even know how to fly the plane anymore!"

Another said: "We must do something about the US military!"

But there have been no reports of a US military aircraft crashing in the South China Sea in April 2023. The video in fact shows a 1999 helicopter accident off the coast of San Diego in the US state of California.

1999 San Diego crash

A reverse image search using keyframes of the video found the same footage was uploaded to YouTube on July 5, 2007 (archived link).

The video shared in the misleading posts corresponds to the video's 16-second to 45-second mark.

The video caption says the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crashed while trying to land on the USNS Pecos off the coast of San Diego, California on December 9, 1999.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the misleading posts (left) and the video uploaded to YouTube (right):

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Screenshot comparison of the video used in the false Weibo post (left) and the video shared on YouTube in 2007 (right)

Further keyword searches found another similar video of the accident uploaded to YouTube in 2018, which also states in the caption that it shows the 1999 crash near San Diego (archived link).

The Los Angeles Times reported on December 10, 1999 that seven marines were feared lost at sea after the Marine Corps helicopter crashed while ferrying troops between ships 14 miles off Point Loma, a neighbourhood in San Diego (archived link).

The report said out of the 18 marines aboard the helicopter, "11 were rescued from the water just minutes after the early afternoon crash, which occurred as the craft took off from the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard on its way to the oiler Pecos".

The accident was also reported by the Washington Post (archived link).

The Los Angeles Times later reported on June 16, 2000 that the accident was blamed on human error and deviations from safety rules (archived link).

"The investigation concluded that the helicopter came in too low and too fast in its attempt to hover over the rear deck of the oiler Pecos," the report read. It noted that the left rear landing gear snagged on a safety net on the rear of the ship and then spun out of control as it attempted to lift off.