An F-16 fighter jet crashed in the desert town of Trona on Wednesday, authorities said.
The pilot safely ejected from the aircraft and was in stable condition, according to U.S. Air Force Sgt. Jovante Johnson. The F-16C Fighting Falcon was assigned to the Air Force Thunderbirds, an aerial acrobatic demonstration team based at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, Johnson said in an email.
The crash took place at around 10:45 a.m. during a training mission, he wrote. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
A motorist, Darren Springer, 60, said he was driving south out of Death Valley when he saw an explosion that sent up a thick plume of black smoke. “My heart sank,” he said.
He looked through a pair of binoculars and saw the wreckage of a fighter jet strewn across the desert floor at the edge of the Searles dry lake. That was followed by a response from “just about every emergency vehicle you could imagine,” he said.
Before the crash, Springer saw at least four Thunderbirds flying low over the area, he said.
The crash took place about 20 miles from the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, the Navy’s largest base and a hub for developing and testing weapons.
