WWII Plane Crashes, Kills 2 in Santa Paula

Two antique-aircraft enthusiasts died Friday when their World War II-era military training plane developed engine trouble, stalled, then plummeted into brush near the end of the Santa Paula Airport runway--the latest in a string of crashes at the tiny airfield.

Authorities said the 62-year-old pilot, Richard Wagner, and his 42-year-old passenger, Thomas Kelly, were killed on impact when their newly restored 1942 Army Air Corps trainer crashed nose-first into hardpan soil about 200 yards short of the airport near the Santa Clara River.

Wagner of San Bernardino was a welfare fraud investigator for Riverside County. Kelly of Riverside was a painting contractor, according to the coroner’s office.

The tragedy was the second crash-landing near the small, privately owned airstrip in the last week, and one of about 30 since 1984--an unusually high number for a small general aviation field in California.

Authorities said, however, that Friday’s crash and that of another small plane into a car on nearby Santa Paula Freeway last Saturday were not caused by factors that have sometimes contributed to previous crashes--the lack of a control tower and the airstrip’s proximity to houses and mountains. No one was seriously injured in Saturday’s crash.

“The airport itself was not a factor; it just has to do with happenstance,” said Bob Phelps, a retired Federal Aviation Administration inspector who heads the airport’s safety committee. “The terrain was not a factor, the weather was not a factor. It’s just that the planes arrive here and have problems. This is not a dangerous airport.”

Santa Paula Police Chief Walt Adair Jr., himself a veteran pilot, said witness reports indicate that the Ryan PT-22 trainer’s engine was popping as it approached the airport to land.

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Instead of continuing its path to east-facing Runway 22, the aircraft banked into a circle. Then, without enough lift to stay in the air, it stalled, went into a slow spiral and crashed from an elevation of about 300 to 400 feet, Adair said.

“It appears to be a stall-spin accident, which is a classic kind,” Adair said. “It results from a tight turn too close to the ground to recover. He made a 360-degree turn. He was probably in the middle of that when he stalled. . . . And that particular type of airplane has a reputation for stall actions with very little warning.”

The silver plane with yellow wings and a red-and-white tail crumpled into the brush near the Santa Clara River but did not burn, partly because emergency crews quickly sprayed foam over leaking fuel, Adair said.

The crash site was about 125 yards from vacant parcels where two houses stood until they burned after a plane crashed into them in 1992, killing the pilot but sparing the residents who were watching television when the plane pierced the roof.

On Friday, residents of that small hardscrabble neighborhood on Oak and Santa Clara streets at the end of the runway said they fear what might fall next from the sky.

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“Now we are afraid because of both crashes in one week,” said Veronica Sandez, who lives with her two children in a small house near the crash site. “There are a lot of airplanes that come through here pretty low. And sometimes they don’t know how to get in here. They come in and then they take off and go back up again.”

Sandez pointed to the dirt mounds and brush adjacent to the crash. “That’s where my kids ride their bikes,” she said. “They’re not going to do that for a while. I’ll tell them the boogeyman will be coming.”

Daughter Amanda Sandez, 9, said: “It’s scary because they might come down and land on our house.”

The girl’s grandfather, Ramon Sandez, said he watched the aircraft’s approach and crash about 9:15 Friday morning. “It was going ‘pop, pop,’ misfiring,” he said. “He tried to go straight in, then he dropped over there.”

At a nearby house, resident Julia Martinez said she and her family would like to move to a safer place.

“But we can’t,” she said. “This is the cheapest we can find.”

Concerns about the high crash rate at the airport have prompted the city of Santa Paula to start buying homes closest to the airport. But state grant money to relocate residents in danger from planes has not reached far enough for the city to buy about 10 houses at the east end of Runway 22.

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The Santa Paula Airport has had more than its share of problems over the last 12 years. Twelve people have been killed in eight crashes since 1991. And from 1984 to 1994, Santa Paula reported more crashes than any other airport in California with a comparable number of flights, according to a 1994 Times survey of 135 airports.

The airport is also more accident-prone than any other airport in Ventura County. Camarillo Airport, which has nearly four times as many flights a year, had the same number of crashes as Santa Paula and three fewer fatalities during the same decade. And Oxnard Airport, with twice as many flights as Santa Paula, reported just four crashes and one death.

The most common cause of crashes at Santa Paula is pilot error, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. As a result of human error, planes have crashed into houses near the airport and into other planes, telephone wires and the surrounding mountains.

Over the years, some Santa Paula residents have called for a control tower, hoping it could reduce the number of crashes.

Only about 400 of the nation’s 17,000 airports have control towers. And federal officials believe that the small amount of air traffic and the mix of aircraft do not warrant the expense of installing and operating a tower in Santa Paula.

Longtime pilots at the airport blame the high crash rate on inexperienced fliers, particularly those unfamiliar with the mountains that flank the airport.

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Tragic Flight

Here are the last few minutes of the flight according to eyewitnesses.

1. The 1942 Ryan PT-22 trainer approaches runway from the east.

2. The airplane’s engine begins to make popping sounds. Pilot attempts a circle turn by banking.

3. Instead, plane loses lift, stalls, then spirals to the ground.

Source: Times staff

Recent Fatal Plane Crashes at Santa Paula Airport

1996

* July 5, Thomas Kelly, 42, of Riverside and Richard Wagner, 62, of San Bernardino; Wagner and his passenger were killed when their World War II-era Army Air Corps trainer developed engine trouble, stalled, then spiraled into brush while approaching the airport’s eastern runway.

1995

* Aug. 12: Richard “Rick” Fessenden, 47, of Camarillo; the former Navy test pilot, who was the first to fly an F-18 Hornet through Top Gun naval fighter plane training, crashed his Berkut plane during an aerobatic stunt at the Santa Paula Air Show.

1994

* July 3: John Forrest Lires, 44, and Erin Lires, 10, of Ojai; their Cessna 195 had engine trouble and plummeted to the ground.

* June 21: Frank Ernest Perry Jr., 72, of Camarillo; his homemade ultralight plane stalled and plunged into the Santa Clara River.

1993

* Dec. 31: Michael Dirkers, 26, of North Carolina; his two-seat Grumman lost power and fell into the Santa Clara River.

1992

* Aug. 27: William Lewis Clark, 49, of Buttonwillow; his single engine Cessna collided midair with another Cessna, then barreled through two houses near runway.

1991

* April 3: Thomas Grist Sr., 51, of Las Vegas and David Knight, 45, of Stockton; the engine died in their home-built plane, causing the plane to fall, crash into a golf cart and explode into flames.

* Feb. 13: Lee Manelski, 45, of Santa Paula and David Tomlinson, 18, of Thousand Oaks; Their Pitts Aerobatic collided midair with a Bell JetRanger helicopter.

Sources: National Transportation Safety Board, FAA