3 Marines Die in Crash of El Toro Helicopter : Flew Into a Ridge Just After Takeoff

The wreckage of a Marine Corps helicopter and the bodies of its three crew members were discovered Friday morning in the foothills of eastern Orange County, where the craft had crashed the previous night while on a training flight from El Toro to Camp Pendleton.

The CH-46E Sea Knight slammed against a steep slope about 200 yards below the top of a ridge just inside the western boundary of the Cleveland National Forest. The cause of the crash is under investigation, Marine Corps officials said. But two Trabuco Canyon residents said they saw the low-flying helicopter fly into clouds shrouding the 2,300-foot-high ridge seconds before they heard the helicopter hit the ground.

Killed in the crash were Maj. Dudley Wayne Urban, 36, of Orange, Maj. William John Anderson, 34, of Santa Ana and Sgt. Bradley Arthur Baird, 26, of Irvine, Marine Corps officials said. Their bodies were airlifted from the crash site Friday and flown to a Navy hospital in San Diego.

Extra Training Hours

Urban, the helicopter’s pilot, and Anderson, the co-pilot, were commissioned Marine Corps officers on reserve duty. Baird, the crew chief, enlisted in 1978 and was still on active duty. Urban had accumulated nearly 4,000 hours of flight time in the CH-46E, and Anderson more than 1,800 hours. As reservists, they were required to participate in flight training once a month, but Thursday night they had been putting in extra training hours, Gunnery Sgt. Peg Cauley said.

The craft was assigned to Medium Helicopter Squadron 764 of Marine Aircraft Group 46, which is based in El Toro but which belongs to the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, the Marine Corps’ nationwide reservist wing, headquartered in New Orleans.

Unlike the controversial CH-53 series of Sea Stallion and Super Stallion helicopters manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft, in which scores have died in crashes, the CH-46 series, a smaller, twin-rotor transport built by Boeing Vertol Co., based in Philadelphia, had the lowest accident rate of any Navy aircraft in 1984.

Marine Sgt. John Gerencser, who is attached to the same unit and had roomed with Baird in Irvine, said Baird had made 300 to 400 flights and never expressed any reservations about the Sea Knight.

“It was a freak thing,” Gerencser said. “It’s kind of hard to swallow. I do the same things he does and we never had any problem flying in them.”

Baird’s tour of duty at El Toro was nearly completed, Gerencser said.

“He was all set to move back to Ohio,” he said, adding that Baird’s wife, Lori, had moved there ahead of him. Authorities said Baird had a 3-year-old daughter, Jamie Lynn. “He was to be reassigned as a recruiter, I think, at the end of the month.”

Staff Sgt. Vicki Turney, an El Toro spokeswoman, said the helicopter took off from the base about 7:30 p.m. Thursday and headed toward Camp Pendleton, where its crew would take it through night training maneuvers before flying back to El Toro. It was not scheduled to land at Pendleton, and air traffic controllers at El Toro did not expect to reestablish radio contact with the craft until about 10 p.m., when it was due to return, Turney said.

But an estimated eight minutes after the helicopter had left the base, it crashed against a brush-covered slope between Bell and Trabuco canyons, about a half-mile east of the end of Robinson Ranch Road. The crash site is less than a mile from a new residential development on the Robinson Ranch, east of Plano Trabuco Road between Coto de Caza and Trabuco Canyon Road.

“We noticed it flying over,” said Barry Klein, who lives about a mile from the crash site and was out with his wife walking their dog. “I told (my wife) it was too low and shouldn’t be flying in this kind of weather. . . . He just flew right into the fog.”

Klein said he felt “disgusted” when he realized that the helicopter was on a collision course with the hills and that there was nothing he could do.

“I heard a ‘whoomp,’ and then the blades turning over twice,” Klein said.

There was no explosion or sign of fire, he said.

Klein ran to the home of a neighbor, who called the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff’s deputies launched a ground and air search and telephoned neighboring airfields, including the El Toro base, according to Lt. Bob Rivas, who said no one reported an overdue helicopter.

Search parties from the Sheriff’s Department and Orange County Fire Department scanned the area but found nothing, authorities said. Soon after 10 p.m., when the training flight had not radioed in or returned to El Toro, Marines joined the search, Turney said.

Joe Bonnello, whose hilltop home is less than half a mile from the crash site, said he got on his motorcycle when he heard of the possible crash and rode the area’s dirt trails. At one point, he realized Friday, he had been within 200 yards of the wreck. He called out repeatedly but heard and saw “absolutely nothing,” even though there was a full moon Thursday night.

“It was foggy,” Bonnello said. “The moon was straight overhead, but those mountains were covered. The way the weather is here, 10 minutes later they can be perfectly clear.”

A Sheriff’s Department helicopter, grounded by poor visibility since about 9 p.m. Thursday night, took off at dawn Friday and found the downed craft about 6 a.m. Deputies found the three crew members’ bodies amid the wreckage and turned the investigation over to the Marine Corps, which flew investigators into the site on helicopters like the one that crashed.

Wreckage was strewn for nearly half a mile across a 200-yard-wide swath cut across the brush-covered mountainside, said Gunnery Sgt. Ed Aikey, who was at the crash site Friday with about 20 other military police. Residents and news crews were not allowed near the site, but helicopters carrying television camera crews and news photographers flew directly overhead for about two hours Friday morning taking pictures.

Klein said between 10 and 15 helicopters fly daily along roughly the same course as the ill-fated aircraft, but are usually 2,000 or 3,000 feet higher.

“I don’t know if he was just thinking he was going to fly just above the ridge or what,” Klein said. “I would have thought that he would have known the terrain in that area.”

Marine Corps investigators continued to sift through wreckage in pouring rain Friday afternoon and were to remain at the crash site overnight to keep the area secure, said Lt. Shawn Cooper, a Marine Corps spokeswoman.

Urban was commissioned in December, 1972, and joined the reserves in November, 1981, after leaving active duty. He is survived by his wife, Janet, and two children, Marine Corps officials said.

Anderson was commissioned in May, 1975, and joined the reserves in October, 1981, following active duty. Authorities did not know if he and his wife, Connie, had children.

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this story.

RECENT CRASHES OF CH-46 HELICOPTERS

July, 1980 -- Two Navy men lost at sea when their CH-46 crashes in the Indian Ocean while on a routine supply mission. One crew member rescued.

February, 1981 -- Six Marines killed when a CH-46 and a CH-53A are involved in a mid-air collision over the Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station at Tustin. All three crew members aboard the CH-46 were killed, and three of the four aboard the CH-53A died.

March, 1982 -- CH-46 participating in maneuvers with South Korean forces crashes in mountains 200 miles south of Seoul, South Korea. Three killed.

October, 1985 -- A CH-46 carrying 19 Marines crashes into the Atlantic Ocean and sinks shortly after taking off from the helicopter carrier Guadalcanal. Fifteen killed.

February, 1986 -- Two Marines killed when their CH-46 plunges into the sea off the coast of the Philippine Islands. The pilot survived the crash.

August, 1986 -- Eight Marines died when a CH-46 crashes into the Atlantic off Norway while taking part in a North Atlantic Treaty Organization exercise.

February 12, 1987 -- Three Marines killed when a Marine reservist CH-46 helicopter crashes in the mountains near El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.