2 weeks Ago
A dark mass of clouds hung low over North Charleston as Marine Col. Charles "Tre" Del Pizzo began his descent. It was a Sunday afternoon, late September 2023.
Del Pizzo's hands were on the control stick and throttle of an F-35B Lightning II, the U.S. military’s most advanced stealth fighter, a $136 million supercomputer with wings.
The F-35B can hover like a helicopter, and Del Pizzo planned to use that technology to land. Del Pizzo had just finished a training sortie over the Atlantic with a second F-35B pilot, practicing tactics at upwards of 500 mph at seven times the force of gravity. He needed to experience this jet’s strengths and weaknesses.
At 48, he was a full bird colonel getting ready to command a squadron in Yuma, Ariz., a high-visibility assignment to fine-tune the Marines’ aviation strategies and procedures, including those for the F-35B. As he closed in on Charleston Air Force Base, he knew he’d hit some bumps.
Forecasters earlier had said the weather would improve, but the opposite happened. Heavy clouds moved in like a big gray curtain. He shot through some turbulence, streaks of precipitation on the canopy, zero visibility.
He’d use his instruments to get through it all. No big deal. Pilots do instrument landings all the time in crud like this.
And the F-35 was packed with instruments, cameras and sensors — all feeding a torrent of data into computers linked to his $400,000 helmet display. The helmet itself was an engineering wonder, custom built for each pilot. It had a dark visor that displayed the jet’s speed, altitude and targeting information, all of which moved with his head.
The jet had cameras mounted on the bottom of the plane that streamed videos to the visor. If he looked down, this fusion of data and optics allowed him to see through the plane’s smooth shark-gray shell. Suddenly, at 1:32:05 p.
m., his helmet flickered. What was that? The plane seemed to be OK.
Then the visor erupted in flashes of alerts. Failures in flight control systems, avionics, cooling, navigation, GPS, communications. Audio alerts sounded: whoop, whoop, whoop.
Then the helmet and main displays went dark; the audio alerts stopped. About 15 seconds had passed. Military aviators are taught to make quick decisions using an “OODA Loop”— observe, orient, decide and act.
The goal is to cycle through the loop’s four phases faster than your opponent. In this case, Del Pizzo’s opponents were the weather and his jet. The helmet display flashed back on.
He ran a loop. Observe, orient: Jet still in the clouds, about 750 feet above ground, still in his control, descending glide path, about 800 feet per minute. Decide, act: Execute a missed approach procedure and get away from the ground.
He pulled back the stick to climb, pushed the throttle forward for thrust. Raised the landing gear. Pressed a button that converts the jet from vertical mode to conventional.
Then the helmet display went dark again, as if rebooting. He tried to radio his wingman, the control tower. Nothing.
Coms out. Then it flashed on, along with another thunderstorm of alerts, more than 25 messages telling him that the jet was in deep trouble and getting worse. Whoop, whoop, whoop.
About 30 seconds had passed. The helmet and main display failed a third time, differently now, as if powering down for good. Instruments gone, a sea of gray outside his window.
Is the plane responding? He pulled the throttle back. He glanced at the small backup panel between his legs. He heard what sounded like a motor spooling down.
The engine? He felt the nose of the aircraft tilt upward. He felt a falling sensation. He still couldn’t see the ground.
Was he still over the base? Over the trees? Forty-one seconds. Decide, act: The jet’s going into the trees, and I’m going with it. In one quick motion, he reached between his legs for the yellow handle, put his left hand over his right wrist.
And pulled. 2. SEMPER FI A decision, once acted upon, always changes your trajectory.
And for fighter pilots, decisions come at Mach speed. To make quicker ones, pilots train like professional athletes, doing rep after rep until important decisions are intuitive and instantaneous. Effective procedures are key.
At their essence, procedures are based on actions people took in the past that proved to be good ones, decisions worth repeating in the future, especially under pressure. Having procedures in place also means that when something goes sideways you’re protected, not punished — as long as you followed those preset rules. All this makes you and your unit faster and more confident warfighters, especially in combat, when second-guessing can be fatal.
This was the system Del Pizzo grew up in, the system he followed as a young Marine flying AV-8B Harriers. It’s the system he trusted while training and flying more than 2,800 hours in 12 different military aircraft, 759 hours in combat. The system that led to a stream of promotions, to decorations like the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, 19 Air Medals.
It’s the system that propelled him to a coveted command assignment. One that had his superiors saying he could someday make general. A system that gave him a profound sense of belonging that only other Marines really understand.
Semper fi. And after those 41 seconds in the cockpit of a failing stealth fighter, it’s a system that betrayed him. His story, shared here for the first time, details his journey back into the cockpit after the mishap, and then how that journey suddenly ended when the Marines relieved him of command more than a year after he pulled the ejection handle.
His story answers many questions about what happened that stormy Sunday afternoon in 2023 over North Charleston, but also raises new ones with stakes that go beyond his mishap: Did the Marines create a dangerous precedent by relieving Del Pizzo? One that makes pilots hesitate to punch out of a malfunctioning aircraft? And, from another altitude: As everything from cars to fighter jets become more dependent on technology, who’s to blame when those machines fail you? Even when he was 2 or 3, Charles "Tre" Del Pizzo wanted to fly. Del Pizzo always wanted to fly. You can see the proof in the old photos.
They’re displayed on the laptop he opened recently on the countertop of a mostly empty house near Washington, D.C. There he was in a time-faded snapshot, age 2 or 3, smiling in a cockpit of a retired A-4 Skyhawk at a Florida air base, the same jet his father flew in Vietnam.
A huge white helmet covered the boy’s bright red hair. And in another shot, about the same age, swallowed up by his dad’s khaki uniform shirt with his Navy wings and ribbons. And there in a third photo, grinning even more in his dad’s Navy dress jacket, his father holding him and smiling, too.
Del Pizzo looked away from the laptop. Around him, the house had an echo that empty houses have. He and his family will move in soon.
After 31 years in the Marines, he’d finally retired, honorable discharge. He’d arrived that morning after driving from Yuma in a rented U-Haul, his Jeep towed behind. Del Pizzo is a thin man with thick hair that’s still red.
He doesn’t quite fit the movie star version of the cocky fighter jet jock. He’s confident but freely tosses out self-deprecating jokes. He speaks more easily about others in his life than himself.
Like his grandfather. A cup carried in World War II by the grandfather of Charles "Tre" Del Pizzo, Sunday, March 9, 2025, at his new rental home near Washington, D.C.
Next to his laptop on the kitchen counter was the metal canteen cup his grandfather carried in World War II, hand-etched with the European countries he marched through under Gen. George Patton’s command. “He was a poor Italian kid in Philly who married the rich Irish girl he met at church, one of those guys who could hear a song once and then play it on the piano without taking lessons.
” Growing up, Del Pizzo thought he’d end up in the Navy like his father. “My dad could fix anything on the car. You know, it's funny what you lose in generations — like I have no Italian language skills, no car-fixing skills.
But I guess I got the pilot gene.” After Vietnam, his father flew jets for the now-defunct Eastern Airlines. The family moved to Atlanta, a major hub.
“I was an airline kid. My dad loved flying, and I don’t remember a time in my life growing up that I didn’t want to fly jets just like my dad.” At 17, he did boot camp at Parris Island in South Carolina, but he still thought he'd end up in the Navy like his father.
From boot camp, he went to Auburn University, mixing college with military training during summers. He also made a course correction. The Marines offered him a faster route to flying jets than the Navy.
After graduating with a degree in criminal justice, he flew straight into flight school in Pensacola, Fla. By then, he already had his pilot’s license, and his love of flight only grew as he logged more time in the air: the eerie night skies, the early mornings when you broke through the cloud bank and saw the rising sun resting on top of it. It might be raining and dark below, but above it was wonderful.
“When I'm in the air, I feel like that's where I'm supposed to be. And when I'm not in the air, I want to get back there.” Marine Col.
Charles "Cheez" Del Pizzo leading a four-plane formation over Iraq in 2016 on the way to Mosul. Del Pizzo's Harrier is second from right. Harriers once were the most dangerous jet in the military, but numerous improvements made it a stalwart, including digital bomb racks on the wings that allowed pilots to carry multiple smart weapons.
By 25, he was flying Harriers, the jump jet created by Great Britain, a stubby, muscular aircraft that was the first fighter to take off and land vertically like a helicopter. His call sign was “Cheez,” which loosely rhymed with the way he pronounced Del Pizzo (Peezo). The Harrier’s ability to hover allowed pilots to land without runways.
But they were beasts to fly. During the Harrier’s first two decades of service, at least 45 Marines died in noncombat incidents, making it one of the military’s most dangerous airplanes to fly. Over time, the Marines made adjustments and improved procedures, and the mishap rate declined.
But the Corps still typically picked the most skilled pilots to fly these finicky birds. In 2003, Del Pizzo was deployed to the Middle East for Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was his first combat deployment, and his father met him just as he was about to leave.
They hadn’t talked much about Vietnam, so he was a little surprised when his father hugged him and said: “You know, I went to war so you wouldn’t have to.” But soon Del Pizzo was crossing into Iraqi airspace with 11 other Harriers and hundreds of U.S.
and allied aircraft. The sun had just set. The darkening sky was filled with Iraqi long-range artillery shells flying over them.
Ballistic missiles headed toward them. He saw explosions over a hill where Marines on the ground breached a defense. But when it came time to drop his 1,000-pound bomb, it wouldn’t release, stuck because something was too tight.
OODA Loop time. Observe: Bomb still there. Orient: Plane OK.
Decide, act: Continue with the mission and get the jet back to the base. Roughly a decade later, he was flying a Harrier to New Mexico for an exercise. At about 25,000 feet, a fire broke out in the avionics bay, frying the plane's electronics, radar, main displays and systems that stabilized the plane.
He worked with air traffic controllers to guide him in, and he landed without incident. Military aviators who knew him said he had an uncanny ability to stay “ahead of the jet” — calmly manage a flood of information about targets, threats, troops on the ground, while piloting a plane at 500 mph. “If you were flying north into Iraq, he was the guy you wanted to lead the mission,” said Guy Berry, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and former Harrier pilot.
Time passed, and Del Pizzo’s trajectory through the Marine Corps moved upward and steady: deployments to Afghanistan, Kuwait and Japan; deployments to Bahrain for combat missions into Syria for Operation Inherent Resolve. He flew Harriers off amphibious assault ships. At the Pentagon, he was assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff working on Southeast Asia policy, and with Navy staff on amphibious expedition warfare.
He worked in the F-35 Joint Program Office, where he served as the senior Marine representative and at Marine Headquarters. His mentors included Marine generals. In 2022, he was selected to take command of Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1 in Yuma, referred to as VMX-1.
It was a choice assignment where Marines test their aircraft to make sure procedures and standards work in real-world scenarios. To Del Pizzo, commanding VMX-1 would be the pinnacle of his career as a military aviator. Good procedures and standards tested in Yuma could save Marines’ lives in the field.
But he wouldn’t formally take command that year. The Marines were short of colonels, and he was assigned more duties at the Pentagon. In the interim, he also needed to learn how to fly the F-35B.
And to do that, he traveled to Beaufort. Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort is home of the “Warlords,” Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501. The base is off U.
S. Highway 21, past a drive-in theater. A slight rise offers a brief view of runways and khaki outdoor canopies shading F-35Bs.
A sign at the base entrance says, "The 'noise' you hear is the sound of freedom." It’s one of two Marine F-35B training centers, with the second in San Diego. It has advanced simulators and a time-tested curriculum.
“Hands down, it was the best training I’d ever had, world-class,” Del Pizzo said. He flew an F-35B for the first time in April 2023, returning to the Beaufort base with a smile on his face. The jet was the most impressive machine he’d ever flown, a mind meld with computers and brute force.
As a future commander of VMX-1, he needed to know as much about the F-35B as possible. The F-35 is the military’s most ambitious weapons system, a $2 trillion investment over the next 50 years in the nation’s air defense capabilities. The jet has three variations: the F-35A, used mainly by the Air Force; the F-35B, which can hover; and the F-35C, which has a more robust structure for carrier landings.
All three variants have a stealthy shape and advanced composite shells to evade enemy radar. But its real value is in the electronics inside; computers and sensors take over some of the pilot’s duties, so pilots become quarterbacks, directing other planes to their targets or serving as forward spotters for ground artillery. But complex systems can come with potential flaws; because these systems build on one another, failures can propagate like a virus.
Charles "Tre" Del Pizzo, Sunday, March 9, 2025, at his new rental home near Washington, D.C. Scarring on his neck is visible, a remnant from when he was cut during an ejection from an F-35B fighter jet over North Charleston in 2023.
Col. Del Pizzo's dramatic landing in a North Charleston neighborhood and the chaos after his jet vanishes..
