Coronado

Navy officials Wednesday said they were investigating what caused a aerial refueling tanker to crash land at the North Island Naval Air Station.

Pilot Lt. Ross Chamberlain and navigator Lt. (J.G.) Steven W. Baldree were not injured when they carefully guided their KA-6D jet tanker aircraft onto the station’s runway at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

“It was reported that they had low fuel and they couldn’t get their wheels down,” Lt. Ken Luchka, a Navy spokesman.

Luchka said Navy officials are investigating the problem with the landing gear and how much damage was sustained by the tanker, which is assigned to the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson.

Chamberlain and Baldree were returning from routine training operations off the coast. Before the landing, they dumped fuel into the ocean as a precautionary measure.

The crash landing was the second in eight days for an aircraft assigned to the Vinson. Last Wednesday, an F-14 Tomcat crashed at sea after the two-man crew parachuted to safety about 80 miles southwest of San Diego. An investigation into that incident also is continuing.