Bloodied Marine Pilot Calm After Ejecting in Washington Crash

Newly released bodycam video shows Marine Corps F-18 pilot Maj. Jackson Simon with blood on his face after surviving a June fighter jet crash in Washington state.

“I’m a little frazzled,” Simon told a Yakima County Sheriff’s deputy whose body-worn camera captured the encounter after the June 13, 2026, crash. Even so, the Marine pilot appeared remarkably calm in the aftermath.

The footage documents the tense minutes after Simon ejected from his F-18 Hornet, moments before the military aircraft crashed into a mountainside near Rimrock Lake. The impact sparked a fireball and sent a dark plume of smoke rising above the tree line.

Though facial cuts left him visibly bloodied, Simon is seen walking casually toward the deputy with a phone in hand, showing little outward panic after descending through the wooded terrain.

When a first responder asked what type of aircraft had gone down, Simon started to identify it in the present tense, saying, “That’s an F-18,” before catching himself.

“Well, that was—,” he said, prompting the responder to ask, “An F-18?” Simon then confirmed the aircraft type.

Simon told deputies he had been flying a low-level training mission over Rimrock Lake when the situation suddenly took a turn.

“We were doing some circles over the lake,” he told the officer. “I tucked in, and I’m not sure exactly. Honestly, I’m a little frazzled.”

When told by a bystander that “you hit the trees bad, bud,” he responded: “I went through the trees.”

When the bystander noticed the pilot was “shaking,” he admitted: “I have some adrenaline going.”

The footage also captured the pilot calmly making calls in the aftermath. In one conversation, he matter-of-factly tells someone, “Hey, buddy, this is Maj. Simon, I just crashed.”

After finishing his calls, he turned to the officer to say: “Without exaggeration: That’s about as close as you come.”

Later footage showed his parachute on the mountainside and the officer helping him gather his gear and cut the parachute from the ropes tangled in the trees.

The responding deputy wrote in the incident report that he found Simon standing on a hillside, “taking off his flight harness” and stacking his gear in a pile. Simon then slid down the embankment to meet the deputy, who performed a “buddy check” for injuries.

Witnesses had watched the military aircraft circling near Rimrock Lake shortly before the crash. Several people called 911 after seeing the pilot eject and the jet plunge into the mountainside, where the impact ignited a fire in the wooded area.

The first report came at 12:18 p.m. local time, according to the incident report. Less than a minute later dispatch was logging “JET CRASH” and “PILOT PARACHUTED OUT.” Multiple callers reported the ejection and fire; one entry says a witness was “crying saying she saw the crash.”

The Marine Corps said the F-18 was assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. It was conducting routine training about 55 miles southeast of Seattle when the “non-fatal aviation mishap” occurred at approximately noon Pacific time June 13. The pilot ejected and was recovered by the local sheriff’s department.

A military spokesperson valued the destroyed aircraft at close to $67 million. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

The 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, headquartered at MCAS Miramar in San Diego, California, has said it is withholding additional details while the investigation continues and noted that military aviation mishap investigations can take several months to complete.