Pilot Bails Out, Is Injured When Jet Crashes in Town

A Marine A-4 Skyhawk, apparently crippled by a fuel leak, lost power and crashed in flames Friday near the Willow Grove Naval Air Station, hitting an auto leasing office and stopping next to a home.

The pilot, Marine Capt. Dwayne Pandorf, 35, who had reported the fuel leak shortly before the crash, ejected and was taken to Abington Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition. No civilian injuries were reported.

Steve Gudknecht, 31, an engineer for a semiconductor firm, was driving nearby when he saw a huge ball of flames.

“I thought maybe there was a house explosion,” he said in a telephone interview.

Gudknecht said he drove through the neighborhood toward the crash site and saw several cars on fire. At least four cars were gutted, with their plastic melted and paint blistered by the fire.

“There was a lot of debris, a lot of people running around real helter-skelter. The police and Fire Department was just arriving. There was a lot of confusion,” he said.

The plane, a single-seat attack craft from Marine Air Group 49, was performing maneuvers with another aircraft when it apparently suffered a flameout and began going down. There was one report that it hit a utility pole shortly before crashing.

Army Capt. Greg Yesko, who works at the air base, said: “The plane struck a roof and took part of the roof off. The remnant of the plane fell between the roof and a home.”

The pilot apparently was able to maneuver the plane enough to avoid a heavily populated residential section, which is crowded with gasoline stations and fast food restaurants.

Staff Sgt. Pamela Thompson, who was helping with the investigation, said: “The pilot did a real good job. He couldn’t have done a better job in an emergency.”

Colleen McKenna, 24, was getting out of her car two blocks away when the crash occurred. When she arrived at the scene, she saw the pilot hanging by his parachute halfway up a 50-foot-tall tree.