2 Marine Pilots Eject to Safety Before Observation Jet Crashes

Two Marine Corps pilots ejected from a single-engine jet and parachuted to safety Saturday, moments before the observation plane crashed onto a hillside in Laguna Hills.

Authorities said the pilots, who apparently experienced engine trouble on their approach to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, drifted to the ground about 500 feet from the burning wreckage of the OA-4 Skyhawk and walked to a military search and rescue helicopter.

They were airlifted to the base, about five miles north of the crash, and treated for what a spokeswoman said were minor injuries. Capt. Joanne Schilling said the pilots remained under “medical observation” late Saturday.

The officers, who were returning from a routine training flight at Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix, were identified as Maj. Thomas E. Chaffin, 39, of Mission Viejo and Maj. Benjamin L. Williams, 41, of Tustin. Chaffin piloted the craft; Williams was the co-pilot.

The crash occurred about 3:40 p.m. atop a ridge at the west edge of Woods Canyon, part of Rancho Mission Viejo near the intersection of Alicia and Moulton parkways.

Witnesses said they heard two successive “booms,” probably the charges from the plane’s ejection seats, and then saw green smoke trailing from the plummeting aircraft’s tail as the officers floated to the ground. The smoke is used to help search and rescue officers quickly locate a downed plane.

The rolling hills, future site of the sprawling Aliso Viejo community, are now populated mostly by about 600 cattle owned by the Mission Viejo Co., said Wendy Wetzel, a spokeswoman for the company.

Though there are scores of condominiums on the knolls flanking the crash site, the nearest structure was a half-mile away, an old bunk house where cowboys used to sleep. It is now used as the ranch office, Wetzel said.

Military officials at the site praised Chaffin and Williams for flying the aircraft to a relatively unpopulated place before they abandoned it. Chaffin, the pilot, was able to walk away from the crash.

The jet smacked down almost silently “on its belly,” according to Jeff Lawson, 18, of Mission Viejo, who said he watched the plane’s descent from a hillside about a half-mile away. It skidded several hundred feet, leaving “a trail of flames,” he said.

The part of the plane directly behind the cockpit was destroyed, but the tail, wings and nose were intact.

Pam Howland, who lives just a few miles from the crash site, was headed back from the ocean along a foot trail south of Moulton Parkway Saturday afternoon.

“I heard a loud pop and I looked up,” Howland said. “There were two parachutes in the air. They kind of went down behind one hillside and the plane sort of drifted behind the other and burst into flames.”

According to Orange County Fire Department Capt. Terry Carson, a witness who saw the plane’s descent and crash as she drove down Alicia Parkway flagged down a passing engine crew, who then notified the Marine Corps. The blaze had “burned itself out” by the time firefighters reached the wreckage, Carson said. Most of the firefighters had to hike to the site because only one of their off-road emergency vehicles could traverse the hilly area.

But the search and rescue helicopter arrived moments after the crash, said Lt. Timothy H. Hoyle, the El Toro base media officer. He said either Chaffin or Williams had radioed air traffic controllers at the station that they were abandoning the craft and that they had followed a brief checklist of procedures before doing so. There was no ammunition aboard the twin-seat jet.

Marine Corps information officers in El Toro and Los Angeles said they did not know specifically what failed in the jet’s Pratt and Whitney engine.

The A-4 Skyhawk is a light-attack single-engine jet developed in the early 1950s. It is “capable of delivering conventional weapons under day and night visual . . . conditions,” Marine Gunnery Sgt. Kathy Cabot said.

Such a plane would be used to attack and destroy surface targets in support of ground forces, Cabot said. The OA-4 is a modified version of that Skyhawk and is used for meteorological observation and training missions, she said.

It is used by the El Toro base’s “headquarters and maintenance Squadron 13 for aerial observation,” Hoyle said.

Times staff writer Barry S. Surman contributed to this story.