An F-16 fighter jet crashed in the desert town of Trona on Wednesday, authorities said.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
The crash took place at around 10:45 a.m. during a training mission, he wrote. The cause of the crash is under investigation.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cMy heart sank,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cjust about every emergency vehicle you could imagine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Before the crash, Springer saw at least four Thunderbirds flying low over the area, he said.<\/p>\n
The crash took place about 20 miles from the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, the Navy\u2019s largest base and a hub for developing and testing weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An F-16 fighter jet crashed in the desert town of Trona on Wednesday, authorities said. The pilot safely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6577,7,9,8,350,46064,44571,46067,19944,46063,348,46062,46066,3482,5853,1410,46065,316],"class_list":["post-80436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-authority","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-crash","tag-darren-springer","tag-death-valley","tag-desert-town","tag-email","tag-f-16-fighter-jet","tag-investigation","tag-jovante-johnson","tag-nellis-air-force-base","tag-nevada","tag-pilot","tag-place","tag-trona","tag-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}