Navy Planes Bomb Desert Campground

Navy warplanes accidentally bombarded a desert camping area over the weekend, slightly wounding one visitor and terrifying several others, the federal Bureau of Land Management announced Monday.

Two attack planes, piloted by junior officers in training at the Naval Air Facility at El Centro, dropped a dozen 500-pound bombs Saturday in an area within the environmentally sensitive Chuckwalla Bench, two miles outside the northern border of the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range, according to the BLM.

The Chuckwalla Bench, located in Riverside County, is designated an area of “critical environmental concern” and is home to the endangered desert tortoise.

The bombs tore shallow craters, 10 to 12 feet in diameter, in the desert floor and set ablaze yucca trees, stocky palo verde plants and slender creosote bushes within a four-acre area. The explosion sent debris, and possibly shrapnel, raining on a motor home parked hundreds of yards away.

Camper Bob Koch of Hacienda Heights was injured slightly when he was struck on the chest either by shrapnel or debris.

John Blachley, chief ranger of the BLM Palm Springs office, said he was informed that the campers were well within the “killing zone” of the bombs but may have been saved because they were behind the paths of the bombs rather than in front of them.

The incident is under investigation by the Navy, but military sources said they believe that the bombing was due to pilots’ error. An early inspection of the aircraft revealed no indication that mechanical or technical failure could have contributed to the mishap, they said.

Lt. Cmdr. Mike John said that, if the investigation finds the air crews are at fault, they could face punishment ranging from a return to basic flight school to a loss of their aviators’ wings.

“This has happened before, and it will probably happen again,” said John, who called the incident “very unfortunate.”

Saturday’s incident was the second time the Navy accidentally bombed the same general area within the last two years, according to the BLM’s Blachley. He said that about two years ago a Navy plane dropped “a couple of bombs” about two miles from the site hit Saturday.

In Nevada, the Navy has come under criticism recently for keeping secret plans to retrieve some 2,000 live and dead bombs that were accidentally dropped outside the Fallon bombing ranges.

Last Saturday morning Paul Ellerd, 63, of Riverside had been watching Navy planes dropping bombs in the range to the south of the Chuckwalla Bench region where he and his wife had gone for a Veterans Day weekend of dirt biking.

At noon, the couple were sitting in the shade beside their motor home along with four other campers when the first plane shrieked into the Chuckwalla.

The planes were loud, Ellerd recalled. “Of course, the bombs were louder,” he added.

The explosions roared, desert plants exploded into flames, and debris pounded down on Ellerd’s mobile home.

He recalled one camper crying out: “My God, what’s going on?”

And then the second plane swooped through, dropping its bombs.

“It was terrible,” said Ellerd, who came back Monday to survey the bomb craters, the scorched plants and the scattered pieces of black, twisted shrapnel. “I figured some idiot was fooling around,” he said. “We couldn’t figure out why it was happening.”

The planes involved in the accidental bombing belong to an attack squadron attached to the Naval Air Station in Oceana, Va.

In Navy parlance, the aviators and “backseater” radar officers involved are called “nuggets”--junior naval officers who have passed initial flight training but have not yet served in a squadron aboard an aircraft carrier. They were serving with Navy Attack Squadron 42, a fleet replacement squadron.

While the Navy declined to release the names of those under investigation, it said their ranks range from lieutenant junior grade to lieutenant.

All are serving with Navy Attack Squadron 42 based at Naval Air Station Oceana, John said. He added that they were conducting live bombing runs at Chocolate Mountain because no East Coast bombing ranges are open for such live ordnance drops on a year-round basis. “That is very routine for us to send detachments out to Chocolate Mountain,” John said.

The BLM plans to assign a biologist to study the damage caused by the bombing, Blachley said.

The last time the Navy accidentally dropped bombs in the area, military personnel were assigned the task of raking and cleaning up, he said.

The 91,000 acres of the Chuckwalla Bench is considered the highest density area for the desert tortoise in the Sonoran Desert of southeastern California and western Arizona, providing habitat to 279 of the creatures per square mile, according to the BLM. The area also provides a home to the bighorn sheep and is uniquely suited for the growing of certain desert plants.

Hurst reported from Desert Center. Healy reported from Washington.