Lost consciousness?
Pancaked it.
That was also my first thought.
Many wondereful things can happen during a loop.
TWB
Looks like he mis-judged the loop; gotta give yourself enough altitude to pull out at the bottom. To be fair, it’s more difficult to judge altitude over the water.
Marine Corps F/A-18 had a similar mishap at the El Toro Air Show back in 1988; the pilot, Colonel Jerry Cadick, was severely injured, but survived. He passed away in 2015. Afterwards, the liked to joke that he “broke” a “perfectly good F/A-18.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFSSJSFtd2k
“Lost consciousness?”
I think many modern fighter jets have an auto-recovery mode if they are about to crash. I would not be surprised to find out there was a software glitch. Having been involved with complex weapons for an entire career, I can tell you that they are still finding glitches in “fully evolved” fielded weapons. Two or three things happen at the same time that the software people never thought of and suddenly you have an entirely new, unplanned function.