Pilot of Vintage Jet Killed in Fiery Crash at Air Show : Aviation: Hundreds of thousands witness inferno. Wreckage scatters almost a mile down runway at El Toro base.

Before hundreds of thousands of stunned spectators, a Korean War-era jet fighter crashed in a tumbling fireball Sunday at the El Toro Air Show, instantly killing the pilot and scattering flaming wreckage almost a mile down the runway.

The restored F-86 Sabrejet, a mainstay of the Air Force in the early 1950s, went down during a solo aerobatic flight. No spectators were hurt.

Witnesses said the vintage fighter crashed and exploded in the middle of a runway at the Marine Corps Air Station after the pilot failed to come out of a vertical loop about a quarter-mile from spectators. The impact sent flaming debris tumbling along the ground, away from spectators.

“He went up in a big ol’ loop,” said Sebastian Murillo, 24, of Rowland Heights. “He came down and I knew he was not going to make it. He was too low. We were running by then. It was like chaos. It was brutal.”

The pilot was James A. Gregory, 40, of Florida, a former Navy aviator, according to Timothy J. Brown, Gregory’s partner and co-owner of the F-86, which they often flew at air shows across the country. Brown said Gregory “had flown the airplane 19 times in the last 16 days.”

A Marine spokeswoman said the name of the victim would not be confirmed until next of kin have been notified. He was killed instantly, the third fatality at the popular El Toro Air Show in eight years.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. No cause had been specified Sunday afternoon, but pilots taking part in the show and watching it speculated that the Sabrejet pilot was improvising his routine and did not climb high enough to perform the loop.

Officials said the F-86 was supposed to perform in a mock dogfight with a Chinese-made MIG-15, the Sabrejet’s main adversary during the Korean War. But when Brown, the MIG’s pilot, became ill before Sunday’s show, the Sabrejet pilot decided to put on an aerobatic display alone.

The crash occurred on the second day of the air show, which attracted about 1 million spectators altogether on Saturday and Sunday.

Witnesses said the F-86 was at the tail end of a vertical loop when it slammed into the ground and burst into flames.

After the thundering impact, spectators cried, hugged each other and comforted their children. Marines had to restrain part of the crowd that began to move toward the flaming wreckage.

“When he came in that low to the ground, I knew something was going to happen,” said Marcia Cuneo of Mission Viejo, who had a front row VIP seat with her family. “I know it was no stunt. It was just unbelievable.”

Even as visitors were buzzing over the horrific event, military and civilian pilots resumed the air show about 90 minutes after the accident.

“The feeling from the other fliers was that (the victim) was a professional pilot and he would have wanted the show to go on,” said Capt. Betsy Sweatt, a Marine Corps spokeswoman.

Sweatt said the Marine Corps declined to issue an official statement Sunday afternoon about the accident or its cause.

A retired Navy commander and aviator who asked that his name not be used said he became concerned about the F-86 as soon as it took off alone.

“The first thing that occurred to me is that he did not have a (performance) sequence,” the former commander said. “The danger is that he was going to make this routine up as he went along--improvise it.”

Brown said that he and Gregory had a planned series of air show maneuvers in the event that they could not put on the dogfight with the MIG, which is owned by a commercial pilot.

Other pilots at the air show, who also did not want to be identified, said the Sabrejet pilot did not appear to have gained enough speed on the ascent to reach the correct altitude for the loop. They also said the maneuver was begun just 20 to 30 feet off the ground.

Bret Willat, 41, a glider pilot from Warner Springs, had just landed his sailplane and was moving it off the runway when the jet crashed a few dozen yards away.

“I heard the explosion and just all those flames. It certainly did not look survivable,” Willat said. “You’ve got the top performers in the world flying here. So something like this is extremely rare.”

Within seconds of the impact, ambulance sirens blared and military and National Transportation Safety Board investigators already at El Toro hurried to the scene.