Fighter Jet Rides San Diego - In 1955, the year this photo was taken in New Jersey, F7U-3 Sabers crashed at least four times.
On a fine Southern California evening in the summer of 1954, I watched a Navy F7U-3 Cutlass jet fighter circle Coronado beach and head out to sea. Then I saw the canopy lift up and the ejection seat catch fire and eject the pilot.
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My friend and Coronado High School classmate Jim Worthington and I watched the parachute inflate and stared up at the sky in disbelief. Moments after the pilot landed in the water, a Coast Guard helicopter appeared and slingshot him out.
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Then we saw his plane take a turn and take a new course, directly towards us and the others on the beach that day.
The lifeguards on duty were Russ Elwell and Tom Carlin, who were a few years older than us. Russ got into the lifeguard's rescue jeep and began driving along the beach, honking his horn to warn visitors to stay out of the water. He could not order them to evacuate; There were hundreds of people on the mile-long, 200-yard-wide strip of sand, and the plane was descending rapidly.
We all grew up together in Coronado, home to Naval Air Station North Island, the "Birthplace of Naval Aviation." We are used to seeing all types of fighters such as propeller and jet. We were now watching this strange looking sophisticated fighter become a deadly threat to all of us.
Cutting nose high, the jet made a pass overhead parallel to the surf line and continued its downward spiral. As he made another descent, swimmers and surfers began to emerge from the water. But at this point it's unclear if there's a safe place we can get to before the jet lands.
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We saw another Cutlass, a Grumman F9F-6 Cougar and a Lockheed T2V SeaStar approaching the unmanned aircraft, circling it and attempting to "steer" it with their air jets.
In the cockpit of the second Cutlass was Lt. Don Christian, piloted by Lt. Floyd C. Launched with Nugent.
, 100 miles from the mainland. I later learned that Cougar and SeaStar were launched from the North Island.
Nugent's Cutlass was equipped with two 2,000-pound bombs, one under each wing, and two rocket boosters. Tower of
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Nugent was told that he had lost the left main landing gear and a bomb under the left wing during the catapult firing. The
It was ordered to circle the North Island to burn fuel, then head out to sea to unload.
On its fourth pass, the unmanned Cutlass, now deafeningly low, hovered above the historic waterfront Hotel del Coronado. (In a later statement, Lieutenant Commander LR Pearson estimated that on its last beach pass, the aircraft had descended to 150 feet.) Just before flying into the hotel, the Cutlass banked right and made a surprising landing graceful in the Pacific blue. About 300 meters from the shore, a huge splash of water, like a seaplane. She floated for a moment, then began to sink.
We all wanted to row up there and check it out. One of the lifeguards, Chuck Quinn, a world-class swimmer and surfer, decided to take a closer look at the sinking plane. But the Navy Frogs were already in the water and drove it off.
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The whole episode was about 30 minutes long, but we talked about it all day. We stood on the beach and watched the Cutlass being lifted from the bottom by a crane. They took him to the North Island, about a mile away.
In the years that followed, we discussed this strange incident long after high school and then college. We thought it was strange
There was not much coverage of the incident at the time. It was as if the Navy wanted to forget him.
On July 26, 1954, San Diego's famed Hotel del Coronado had a close encounter with an unguided Cutlass.
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Partly it became clear to me 60 years later. Last summer, my friend Logan Jenkins, columnist
, became interested in the exotic Cutlass aircraft. The events of that day in July 1954 were related to him as I have them here.
Logan learned that a similar (but more widely reported) incident had occurred in March 1954, four months earlier, not far from the site of the Cutlass incident. Previously, a Navy F-6 F9 pilot was scheduled to eject about 20 miles into the sea from Coronado and San Diego. The Cougar he was flying did the same thing I saw it do at the Cutlass four months later, heading back landward, this time toward downtown San Diego.
In that case, Lieutenant Junior Grade C.W. Vandenberg flew to intercept the Cougar, positioning the port wingtip under the unmanned Cougar's right wing. Performing this dangerous maneuver on either side of the puma, he directed the stream of air against the puma's wings to bounce off the ocean, eventually causing it to collapse.
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Decades later, two similar incidents that occurred at nearly the same location led to confusion: Later accounts sometimes combined the two stories of runaway Navy jets or changed the names of the pilots involved.
Christianson, the pilot who attempted to hijack the Cutlass at sea, received no such accolade, possibly because his attempt to fight off a runaway plane was unsuccessful.
On his behalf, he and the Seastar and Cougar pilots “tried to get [the unmanned Cutlass] clear of the San Diego area, but at 95-100 knots none of us could slow it down. I could move the wing momentarily to change the tack, but the difference of five or ten knots between my speed and [the Cutlass'] made steering impossible. It was launched to an altitude of 7,200 [feet] and made four orbits, landing in the water 1,000 feet from the beach off South Coronado.
Nugent's catapult failed to secure the left main gear oleo strut during launch. The Cutlass has always been a problem aircraft for the Navy (see "The Gutless Cutlass", August 2013). Many of them had crashed before Nugent's flight, and many more afterward caused many deaths. It was nicknamed the "Gutless Cutlass" for its dangerously underpowered engines. The Navy lost faith in aviation after several carrier crashes, one of which was the USS
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While this was certainly a just fate for such a troubled aircraft, it is a pity Christianson was never honored for his service that day. Whether or not he believed he managed to push Cutlass onto the beach, to everyone watching that long-ago episode, he was a hero.
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