Eagled-Eyed Air Force Vet Finds Crash Sites : Rescue: Retired lieutenant colonel still has knack for spotting downed planes--including two in the last week.

By his count, 70-year-old Keith P. Kelley has spotted several hundred plane crashes since World War II, scouring the skies as an Air Force search and rescue pilot and now as a volunteer pilot for the U.S. Civil Air Patrol.

On Saturday, the Van Nuys resident found a Cessna 152 that crashed near Santiago Peak in Riverside County and led rescuers to the area where they found the two survivors. The occupants of the plane suffered minor injuries but were not hospitalized.

It was the second plane crash the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel had sighted in the past week.

Last Monday, Kelley found the wreckage of a Cessna 182 at Lake Henshaw, in rural northeast San Diego County, where two survivors were also rescued. The passenger escaped with minor injuries and the pilot was hospitalized.

“There’s nothing quite like the sense of worth and usefulness you get when you rescue somebody,” said Kelley, a great-grandfather, who in the last three years has found 18 downed planes throughout the West.

“Everybody (in the Civil Air Patrol) is part of a team that saves lives and it’s a very rewarding activity,” he said. “Even if you don’t find them alive, it’s important to find the body so that the family can start the healing and grieving process.”

For the past six years, Kelley’s flights have been aided by his wife, Katherine, 63. While he takes to the air, she serves as ground control, helping him monitor Mayday calls and directing him.

“We live by the radio calls together. We go to the bases together,” he said. “The only time we’re apart is when a search breaks and then her duties are on the ground, while mine are in the air.”

In the latest incident, Air Force monitors at Scott Field, Ill., began receiving Mayday signals from the vicinity of Lake Elsinore late Friday night, Kelley said. The Air Force contacted Group One of the Civil Air Patrol, which serves Southern California.

A search plane was dispatched, but had to return because of electrical problems, Kelley said. At 2 a.m., Kelley was awakened with an assignment to fly his Cessna Cardinal and look for the downed plane in the Saddleback Mountains east of Santa Ana.

At dawn, Kelley spotted the small plane, which had crashed into a large fir tree at Mayhew Canyon. The impact of the collision sheared off both wings, Kelley said, leaving the aircraft hanging precariously among the tree branches. The sight made Kelley skeptical that anybody had survived.

But because the tree broke their fall, the pilot and his passenger were saved, Kelley said.

When rescuers arrived, they found the pilot, Adrian Scott, and the passenger, George Kirscher, both of San Diego, walking five miles from the crash site. They were taken to Federal Aviation Administration officials to report the accident. Neither of the men could be reached for comment.

With Kelley during his latest find was retired Army Lt. Col. Banner Rice of Woodland Hills.

Last Monday, Rice’s wife, Lu, was the observer aboard Kelley’s plane when pilot Jeffrey Palmer, 45, of Olivenhain, and Mabel Clayton, 42, of Solana Beach, were rescued from a plane crash in San Diego County.

“He’s a phenomenal guy,” said 74-year-old Lt. Col. Bob Fowler of Studio City, another member of the Civil Air Patrol. “It’s amazing that this man, at 70 years of age, has made it a lifetime job of finding people. Even at his age, he’ll offer to get up whenever (an emergency occurs) and then he’ll come home to sleep or play golf afterward.”

Hunting lost planes is something Kelley has done since 1942, when he was a member of a two-man Air Force mountain patrol search and rescue team.

Retiring from the service in 1964, Kelley joined the Civil Air Patrol, which has its regional headquarters at the National Guard base in Van Nuys. Although Kelley did not start piloting again until 1979, he was an active volunteer as a ground patrol member of the civilian force.

On his 70th birthday last year, Kelley spotted two Camp Pendleton Marine Corps pilots who had been missing for more than two weeks. The Civil Air Patrol had searched for 16 days until Kelley spotted the Marines in the mountains north of San Diego.