Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Santa Ana Plane Crash - 1940s or 1950s

OCThen reader, "coxpilot" asks if anyone remembers the time when a jet plane crashed into a neighborhood in Santa Ana, in the late 1940s or early 1950s...

Does anyone remember a jet plane that crashed in Santa Ana in the late '40s or early '50s, in the area around S. Ross & W. Cubbon? I lived in the 1400 block of S. Olive when we all heard a great boom, and went outside to see the rising smoke. My friends and I jumped on bikes and went as fast as we could. We were there before any fire trucks or police, and saw a big hole in the ground where the front yard once was, and the living room wall was missing too. My friend kept a piece of green aluminum he found in the street. I'm told that it was a saber jet from El Toro, and the pilot had not been able to eject.
Seems like this is something that should have quite a bit of coverage in the Santa Ana Register, but I don't have access to those archives online.

Update Sep 12, 2010: Larry Fuller submits the following photo showing where the airplane exploded...


Hi Steve,

I just posted about the jet aircraft that crashed in Santa Ana in 1952. Above, is a photo of the intersection of S. Olive and Wilshire from that period. The Green "X" is where I was standing and the Red "X"
is where the aircraft exploded just above the trees. I've also attached the full photo this section was taken from. The bean patch in the rear of the full photo would later become the playground behind Glenn Martin Elementary.
After the crash, two military helicopters landed on the playground to assist with the recovery and investigation of the crash.

Larry Fuller
Albuquerque, NM

P.S. I marked the attached photo as 1949, but it could well have been summer of 1950. The photo was taken from the front yard of 1310 S. Olive.

The green "X" and red "X" he mentions above were not on the photo he submitted, but marked over the photo perhaps through his e-mail client. But the explosion occured above the tallest tree on the far-right.

43 comments:

  1. I seem to remember a plane crash that happened somewhere down by Edinger and the 55 freeway which killed the president and vice pres of In-n-Out.
    ...Leo

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  2. I remember that crash too, but it was not the same one. I've been trying to research the time, but that was a long time ago. I must have been between 1947 (we moved to S.A.) and 1955 (when I got a new bike). I remember rushing on my old Shwinn "springer", and seeing the smoke rise out of a huge hole in the front yard of the house (without a front wall).

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  3. i lived on the 300 block of south broadway in santa ana when this occured,it had to have been in the early 1950s and no later then 1954 as i was playing in the back yard with my sister (she was born in late 1949)and we heard a loud howl followed by a huge boom,my grandmother came running out the back door to see what happened,when my dad came home from work that nite we drove over by the crash site,the aircraft demolished a house but as i remember no one was home at the time,the pilot was lost and i believe the aircraft was a grumman f9f out of el toro

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  4. Anonymous: Thank goodness! I thought I was going nuts. I've tried to look at several air crash record sites, but nothing. I also remember that a boy was on his bike a few doors down from the crash, and was blown off when the plane hit. We all thought it was neat that he landed on the porch across the street.

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    Replies
    1. My mother lived on s parton and remembers crash, she was curious of the boy who was knocked off his bike. If you know please let me know LeslieLynnus@yahoo.com thank you .

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  5. I saw a crash at the Los Alamitos Naval Air Station in 1959. It was a Grumman Sub Chaser and it just did a small turn and went straight down onto the runway. I saw the plane fall and then behind the buildings a huge fireball when it hit. Sadly all aboard were killed.
    I never knew there was more than one plane crash at that time.

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  6. This gives me a chance to ask a question that has bugged me for many years- I grew up in what was then unincorporated OC, at Prospect and Fairhaven, and in the very early 1960s, I remember so well sitting in my sandbox in our back yard, hearing a very loud plane, and looking up, I saw a plane flying overhead so low that I could actually see the rivets and metal plates of the fuselage. I was likely 5 years old at the time, but it seemed to me that the plane was so low that it was just above the tops of the eucalyptus trees that lined our fence. I did hear that this line of trees was a visual aid to pilots going into JWA, but this plane didn't look like those...if JWA was even open back then.

    Can anyone give me a clue as to what this mystery plane was, why it was flying so low, etc? Its an itch I have not been able to scratch for over 40 years! ^_^

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  7. The jet that rashed was into a home on Broadway one block south of edinger. It was 1954 or 1955 and it was from El Toro.

    The unidentified plane requested in another response was the Horton Wingless. It used to fly around the County.

    What more?

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  8. It was after 1951. The crash site was close to Martin Elementary school (which opened in 1951).

    For some reason I recall it was on Parton St. just below Wilshire. I recall seeing the site - took out one house.

    I definitely recall the story going around was that the pilot didn't bail because he was trying to ride it out past the residential area. Too bad because at that time he would have only had to make it a short distance past Delhi (now Warner) to clear residences.

    I just might have a press clipping from The Register tucked away in a box. If so I'll get back with the info soon.

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  9. Yesterday I posted anonymously recalling the crash was on Parton. I did find my copy of the then "Santa Ana Register" dated Thursday, July 17, 1952 with the banner headline:
    Navy Identifies Victim Of Jet Crash

    Here's a digest of what occurred:

    The jet crashed at 3:30PM on Wednesday, July 16, 1952.

    It was a Navy Banshee F2H-1 piloted by Lt. Robert N. Anderson out of Los Alamitos Naval Air Station.

    Anderson, from Los Angeles, was a Navy reserve officer on a training flight.

    The plane experienced some sort of unknown trouble at about 15,000 feet. The plane made an uncontrollable dive and began breaking up before impact.

    It crashed into an unoccupied house at 1305 S. Parton - the second house from the corner of Parton and Wilshire on the eastside of Parton. The house was totally destroyed leaving a crater up to eighteen feet deep in places.

    The next door house on the S.E corner at 1801 S. Parton was partially damaged. It too was unoccupied.

    Houses on the west side of Parton were damaged by the concussion from the impact and flying debris. Debris scattered as far as Flower St. - two streets to the west of Parton.

    The pilot was the only fatality. One neighbor woman was injured by a piece of debris that came through the wall of her dining room striking her on her side. A ten-year-old boy playing in his backyard on South Garnsey was almost hit by a piece of debris.

    A cocker spaniel, the pet belonging to the owners of the demolished house, was at the house at the time of the crash but was not injured.

    In those days there was no NTSB to investigate. FAA and DoD did no lenghty closure of the area to conduct an investigation as they would today. After the pilot's body was recovered the evening of the crash the Navy filled in the crater.

    The Navy released a report the following day that the pilot could have ejected however it was determined he was attempting to ride it out and was heading toward the almost unpopulated area not far to the south.

    I lived just a few blocks west of the crash. Like many others at the time I heard the loud and eerie sound of the jet as it sped towards the ground. Like others I curiously went to the crash site. Expecting to see wide-spread devastation I remember it was so confined. I found a piece of debris - a jagged piece of riveted aluminum about ten inches in length with some yellowish primer - in the middle of Flower Street. I kept that piece as a macabre souvenir for many years.

    The crash - especially the noise of the doomed plane overhead - left a stigma with many of us children and our mothers for a period of time. I suspect today we would be traumatized and various local, state, and federal agencies would rush a plethora of counselors to our collective aide.

    We all bore the aftermath but it did leave many of us, for quite some time, craning our necks to anxiously watch the sky as planes flew overhead. In those days there were aircraft sounds unlike what we hear today. As one person posted a captured German Horton Wingless did fly over Orange County quite often. It had its own distinctive sound. Likewise there always seemed to be the lengthy drone of high flying bombers. Those planes seemed to attract the most gazers for the longest times. The only aircraft that didn't startle folks and seemed to bring a sense of peace were the lumbering Navy blimps out of L.T.A. as they came and went on their coastal patrols.

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  10. 92707: Thanks for the research, and comprehensive answer to my original question. We lived in the 1400 block of South Olive, a short bike ride to the crash site.

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  11. There seems to be some misunderstanding here about the Horton Wingless aircraft,since my uncle was the treasurer of the Horton aircraft co and i have known Bill Horton from the 1950s up until his death in Las Vegas in january of 2000 i feel i can clear up some of the confusion,this aircraft is not the german built Horten bros wingless but was designed and built by Bill Horton in a 3 way partner ship with Howard Hughes and Harlow Curtice of General Motors fame,the aircraft was not rivited construction but was a welded steel frame covered with a fabric skin and powered by 2 Pratt and Whitney R985 radial engines the aircraft logged around 160 hrs of flight time before Bill had a falling out with Hughes,Was railroaded to prison on trumped up charges and his aircraft was moved to the bone yard at the south end of the Orange Co airport and destroyed,Las Vegas reporter George Knapp of klas tv channel 8 aired a fantastic 2 part interview with bill in nov of 1997 that explained the whole story in detail

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  12. Thanks for the clarification about the Horton mystique. When it sat on the south end of the airport, long before it was Orange County Airport and folks still called it Martin, people used to point and tell the story about a captured German aircraft. Looks like the wrong Horton. I recall it disappeared along with all the PBY's that were deteriorating in the same place.

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  13. As a kid, my friends and I would ride our bikes out to the Santa Ana airport (mid 50's) and climb around and sit in any plane that was open. The list included the Horton wingless, Paul Mantz red P-51 and movie plane, the replica of the Spirit of St. Louis, the PBY's, and several British Jets (forget the name). We would eat in the diner, and then head home.

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  14. the british jets refered to in the above post were de havelin vampire jets,they were made of plywood

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  15. this is for pikachumom, back at about that time a 14 or 15 year old kid stole his fathers private plane out of OC airport and buzzed Santa Ana & North Tustin before managing to get it back and landing it at the airport. I was watching him in SA and he missed the roof of the Tower factory by about 3 ft. Bet it's the same incident

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  16. I was born at St. Joseph Hospital in 1949 and we lived on the 1100 block of South Magnolia. Only three when the plane crashed, I remember my mom and sister and I walking over to the crash site the next day. My sister was in afternoon kindergarten at Glenn L. Martin school and had just been released when the crash happened. My mom and I had walked to Martin to pick her up and were about halfway home when we saw the plane come down and heard the awful crash. It frightenes me to this day to think that if the crash had occurred a few minutes earlier and a few blocks to the north west, hundreds of school kids and teachers would have died. I always wondered if the pilot aimed away from the school as his final act of humanity.

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  17. The crash was about 1952. My friends and I were playing ball at Santa Ana High School and watched the plane come down. We raced to the site and saw the hole in the ground.
    I moved to Anaheim in Summer of 1953 so it had to summer of '52.
    RF Salt Lake City.

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  18. In response to the comment about "if the plane crash had happened a few blocks..." The pilot of the plane stayed with the craft to try to guide it away from buildings, schools and homes if possible. He gave his life to try to save others' lives. The is the pilot creed, stay with the plane if it is going down in a populated area to try to avoid other deaths. He paid the ultimate price. No one but he was injured.

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  19. It was in the summer of 1952. I was playing in my backyard with a friend, my house being located on south Garnsey, 2nd house from the corner, directly inline with the house on Parton street which was the crash site. I was 12, and my friend and I looked up and saw this plane obviously in trouble, when all of a sudden it turned downward, and headed straight down. As it got closer it looked like a wing broke off, and then there was this terrific thud and concussion with dirt, and pieces of house and plane in the air. My friend grabbed me and we ducked behind a portion of our house as the debris fell all around us. We immediately ran through the yard behind us and across Parton to see a very damaged house and a large hole. It was unearthly quiet for a moment then many people began to arrive. My mom was at the local grocery store and heard it had crashed on Glenn Martin schoolyard, which cause great concern as my sisters were there playing. We heard later that the pilot had considered crashing there, but did not because of the children. He then gave his life to protect as many as he could. My dad was a reporter, and I called him to report this, and thus gave him a good scoop! For months after little pieces of aluminum, green colored, were found in our garden and yard.

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  20. Speaking of plane crashes and Paul Mantz, my engine company was sent to the crash in the Santa Ana Mountains that killed his partner, Frank Tallman, of Tallman Aviation and movie stunt flying fame.

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  21. I was about 8 and living in south Santa Ana at the time of the crash. I remember riding by the crash site with my parents and have retained a mental picture of the demolished house to this day. There is a book out called "Santa Ana, 1940-1970" that has a picture of the house and a little bit of information.

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  22. I remember this like it was yesterday. Still remember pieces of the plane embedded in the trees across the street.I think Dave Wyatt lives across the street from the plane crash. So many years ago

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  23. I was about 9 at the time we lived just south of the high school on Parton. I was playing outside and heard a plane go over very low and loud and then a big boom and as you looked down Parton nothing but dust. Our neighbors were a marine pilot family and the wife came out of the house screaming fortunately it was not her husband.

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  24. Horton WinglessJune 28, 2009 10:48 PM

    To Anonymous, dated Feb 04, 2008, regarding Bill Horton:

    I remember seeing his wingless airplane flying over our house in Huntington Beach. We all knew he had been sent to prison, but never knew for what. Glad to finally know. His daughters were my friends, especially Gloria. Never knew what happened to her. Do you know how she can be reached?

    Sharon "Clegg" MacCallum
    714-749-3998

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  25. The summer of 1952 crash was a North American Aviation’s F-86F Sabrejet that had part of its right wind sheared of by either a midair collision or one of 200-gallon drop tanks partly disconnected.

    The USAF would fly out of George AFB in CA, the USMC would fly out of El Toro, CA and the USN would fly out of San Diego CA. They would conduct joint training or dog fights over the southwestern side a Catalina Island. Under any type of emergency, they would land at any of the other’s fields.


    The other one that might be confusing everyone was a North American Aviation’s F-100 Super Sabre of the 456th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron of the USAF based at George AFB CA

    It was during project HOT ROD that operational suitability tests found the F-100 to have superior performance but declared it not ready for wide scale deployment due to various deficiencies in the design.

    They found troubling during certain regimes of flight would produce inertia coupling instability. The aircraft would develop a sudden yaw and roll and the overstress the aircraft structure to disintegration. This would happen too fast for the pilot to correct and would quickly

    In 1954 crash, the plane was in right role and at 45 degrees when the pilot ejected at 50 feet just as he crossed over the sands of Aliso Beach. Half his chute opened before he hit the water. The pilot survived.

    At that time, all crashes were classified so that the flaws of the aircraft could not be taken advantage of.

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  26. I remember the plane crash and several details about it, in fact I took some pictures of the crash and if I find them would be glad to share them with someone. I also had pieces from several blocks away but those have long since been thrown out. They too were aluminum with yellow & green paint. I lived in the 700 block of So. Parton and was on my front porch at the time the plane exploded in the air. After we went to the crash site and took pictures of what was left of the house, etc. I will look for those pictures at a later date.

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  27. I went to my very old photo album and found six pictures of that house after the plane crashed into it on Parton in 1952.

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  28. I'd love to see them. Any idea what the address of that house would have been? I realize that's asking a lot...

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  29. I to remember the crash. The plane flew a low circle over our house at 325 Normandy Place before heading south. The aircraft had no engine noise because, as my father said, the pilot had experience a flame-out.

    Later, on our way past the Sears store and Mayfair Super Market on South Main, an ambulance went by with the pilot visible through a side window wrapped in gauze like a mummy. I was really freaked out. The "crash-crew" from El Toro was on scene long before we got there!


    We moved to 2112 S. Birch street, near the crash site, the following year (1953) where I attended Washington Elementary on Flower street. Small pieces of aluminum from the plane with zinc chromate paint were traded amongst neighborhhod kids for years. A classmate's older brother had a large section of the tail fin hidden in his garage for years which I saw many times.

    Gary Brenz
    Stoughton, Wisconsin
    macv1@tds.net

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  30. I to remember that crash. I was 18 years old and home alone at 1430 S. Van Ness St. watching TV. I heard the noise and ran north on Van Ness and saw a large piece of the plane in the middle of the 1300 block of Van Ness. I went west up to Parton and saw were the plane went down. there was a crater in the front yard and the top double 2x4 plate was exposed and had a simi round section gone the same diameter as the fuselage. I asked someone, therewere only a handful of people at the time as I had ran all the way, if they had looked into the crater and he said no, so I very gingerly went up and looked, thinking I would see a grotesque site, and all I saw was dirt. The things I have always remember is the simi-circle in the top plate and how the plane hit the center of a very small front yard. Other then the crater the only other damange I remember seeing in the yard was a small buckle in the City sidewalk. Also I believe the address was 1300 block as I lived at 1430 south and I ran North a block plus.

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  31. I lived on flower street just two blocks away. We too kept an eye and ear out after that incident. And the pilot was always thought a hero for staying with the plane to attempt to keep it away from residents. We had a piece of the cockpit glass for years in our garage.

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  32. I was five years old and lived on the 1300 block of S. Olive St. when the jet crashed. The aircraft was flying very low, east over Wilshire and had just crossed the intersection with S. Olive when the engine exploded. I was standing on Wilshire, about twenty feet east of Olive. The jet's engine was at full throttle and was making a loud rending noise. The plane flew directly over me at maybe 30 to 40 feet AGL. The tail had just passed over me when the engine exploded. The concussion was strong enough to make the soles of my bare feet sting from slapping the asphalt. Pieces of the aircraft flew out in all directions. The main part of the plane rolled right and went into the ground. If anyone is interested, I have a picture of that intersection taken in 1950 on which I can show where I was standing and where the jet was when it came apart in the air. The plane had straight wings with no tip-tanks. I think it was a F-80 or something almost identical.

    Larry Fuller
    1310 S. Olive (1952)

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  33. After posting, I looked up the Banshee F2H-1 on the web, and that's the plane that went down. The aircraft was bright aluminum and wasn't painted as most of the photos of this model show.

    Larry Fuller

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  34. Are you sure it wasn't a McDonnell FH Phantom? Very similar to the F2H, and no tip tanks.

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  35. Re: McDonnell FH Phantom?

    My memory of this incident is over 58 yrs. old. I looked up photos of the McDonnell FH Phantom. Though I'm a pilot with +3000 hrs. now,I saw the crash as a five year old. I can't tell you for sure that it wasn't a FH Phantom.

    Larry Fuller

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  36. My father had just picked me up from dancing school when we heard the plane heading toward the ground. My father worked at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach doing electronic safety control for the DC-3. We heard the crash and went the two blocks to the crash site. No emergency staff had arrived yet...but there was a very large hole and the plane was burning. I was 8 and I will never forget it. To this day if I hear a plane engine I get a very tense feeling. I was so glad to find this site, it answered many questions for me. Thanks

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  37. Does anyone know if this crash was part of a naval operation involving G-force training?

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  38. I was 10 years old in 1952. As I recall it was August. A group of us were at Lathrop Jr. High in a summer recreation program. When the aircraft flew over, two of us were on the roof of the "equipment shack" retrieving a basketball. We watched the plane crash at what appeared to be 4 - 6 blocks southwest of the Lathrop track.

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  39. When I was 7 years old, my twin brother and I and my Dad took our first airplane flight and the pilot was Bill Horton whom my Dad was good friends with. Got to see his Wingless Plane but don't remember it ever flying. My Dad I believe was part of his company and purchased stock which I have copies of. If you know anything about Bill Horton or my Dad Christ Falkowski, please email to patsyathome@kpunet.net. Thank you.

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  40. I can still see the crash site in my mind. The house and street were roped off and what was left of the plane was sticking nose down out of the ground. A lot of people walked to the area to see what had happened. It made quite an impression as I am now 67 and remember it vividly.

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  41. I lived at S. Magnolia and Delhi (now Warner), saw the plane and heard the crash. My mother and several neighbors drove over to the crash site and parked several blocks away. I too remember pieces of metal imbedded in the trees. Lots of people were there speculating on what may have happened. Never did dampen my spirit to fly. My Dad was a Marine pilot, but overseas when this happened.

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  42. Remember it well. After an ear splitting jet sound and thud my mother and I walked a few blocks to see a hole in the ground in the yard of a small house. Just dirt clods and small chunks of twisted metal. I picked one up but a policeman took it from me. The house was standing but only the studs. I was seven.

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