F-35 crash Albuquerque

[Zaphod58]

A lot of these have crashed. 

I remember during evaluation/testing there was skuttlebut of how dangerous they were to fly.

No, they really haven't.  This is something like 15 crashed, and MAYBE 40 mishaps (counting the 15 crashes in that). They've surpassed 800,000 flight hours since they started flying, and Luke AFB alone has flown over 100,000 sorties.