Black smoke over San Diego is never a good sign. On Friday morning, it meant a stealth fighter was down. A U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II crashed in the vicinity of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar shortly before 10 a.m. Pacific time, sending a column of black smoke into the sky above the city and scorching a patch of ground short of the runway.

The pilot got out. That is the headline that matters. He ejected, was recovered, and was taken to a local hospital in stable condition with injuries the Marine Corps described as non-life-threatening. A news helicopter caught the aftermath: a plume of smoke rising from a dirt field, fire trucks and military vehicles clustered around the wreckage.

The jet belonged to Marine Aircraft Group 11 of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing — Miramar's own. What brought it down is not yet known.

A "Class A" morning

The Marines labelled the crash a "Class A mishap," and the phrase carries weight. In U.S. military accounting, a Class A is the worst tier: damage of at least $2.5 million, a destroyed aircraft, or a death or permanent disability. When the aircraft in question is an F-35B — a jet that runs north of $100 million a copy — a hull loss clears that bar on its own.

Beyond that terse confirmation, the Marine Corps has said little, which is normal this early. A Class A mishap triggers a formal safety investigation, and investigators will comb through flight data, maintenance records and the wreckage before anyone offers a cause. That process takes months, not hours.

One seat, one engine

The F-35B is the short-takeoff, vertical-landing member of the Lightning II family — the version the Marines built their future around. It is single-seat and single-engine, its Pratt & Whitney F135 driving a shaft-linked lift fan behind the cockpit that lets the jet hover and land like a Harrier. That elegance comes with a hard truth: there is no second engine to limp home on. When something goes badly wrong low and slow, the ejection seat is the plan.

On Friday, that plan worked. The pilot is alive and stable — the outcome every one of these stories is measured against.

It is not the first Marine F-35B to make unwelcome headlines. In September 2023, a pilot ejected from an F-35B near Charleston, South Carolina, and the jet flew on, pilotless, for some 60 miles before coming down in a rural field — a bizarre episode that had crews briefly asking the public to help find a missing stealth fighter. Friday's crash was more conventional, and mercifully close to home.

What comes next

Expect a quiet few weeks. The safety board will do its work, Miramar will carry on, and the fleet will keep flying unless investigators find a reason not to. For now the record is simple and, by the standard these events are judged on, a good one: an aircraft lost, a pilot walking away.

Sources: U.S. Marine Corps / 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing statements; USNI News; CNN; NBC News; Stars and Stripes; The Washington Post.