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Fiery Plane Crash Recalled 39 Years Later
Chances are you can figure out who has lived here a long time by asking only one question, "Do you remember the plane that crashed into the apartment?"
Imagine a jet flying 400 miles per hour at 28,000 feet altitude plummeting to the ground in the middle of the Island, slamming into a multi-story apartment complex then bursting into flames.
For those who find that hard to fathom or think it's the plot line for a new action adventure film, you are either newcomers to the Island or too young to remember what for many Alamedans was a defining moment in their lives.
Locals of a certain age have stored the image of what happened Wednesday, Feb. 7, 1973 at 8:13 p.m. right next to their memories of the day President Kennedy was assasinated, John Lennon was gunned down and the Twin Towers fell.
For those who witnessed the deadly accident or saw its immediate aftermath, the crash of the jet into the four-story Tahoe Apartments at 1814 Central Avenue, smack dab in the middle of the Island, was a life-changing moment.
The plane that crashed was actually one of two U.S. Navy A-7E Corsair II jet interceptors that were flying together on a routine training flight to Sacramento from the Lemoore Naval Air Station in Fresno. (Yes, that's right, this was not a jet flying in or out of the former Naval Air Station Alameda as some have assumed over the years.)
The impact, explosion and ensuing fire destroyed the apartment house and spread to three adjacent apartment buildings.
The pilot and ten people on the ground were killed. Over two dozen more were injured.
(To get a sense of the size of the apartment it hit, you can see an aerial photograph of the Sycamore Apartments (Former site of Tahoe Apartments) here.)
A detailed and harrowing account of the crash can be found on this site of notable California aviation disasters. Here are some excerpts from that report:
"One of the jets, piloted by Lieutenant Robert Lee Ward, 28, inexplicably broke from the formation. Moments later, the pilot of the second Corsair, flight leader Lt. John Pianetta, noticed that Ward’s jet was no longer flying alongside his own aircraft and radioed Oakland Air Traffic Control that he had 'lost his wing man.'”
Pianetta was given permission to turn back to look for Ward’s Corsair and as he banked his aircraft to try to locate the missing jet, he witnessed a fiery explosion erupt far below, amidst the twinkling lights of the city of Alameda.
Lt. Ward’s jet, traveling at more that 400 mph, had plunged out of the nighttime sky at a steep angle and slammed into the four-story Tahoe Apartments building at 1814 Central Avenue in the center of the city....
Over the next several days, investigators sifting through the smoldering rubble determined that 11 people, including Lieutenant Ward, the jet’s pilot, had been killed in the disaster. Twenty-six other people were treated at nearby hospitals and eventually released....
A Navy board of inquiry, formed at the nearby Alameda Naval Air Station to investigate the crash, heard testimony from a number of witnesses, including two civilian metallurgists. One, Charles F. Choa, told the Navy board that he had found evidence of a cockpit fire involving the pilot’s oxygen hose, and that the in-flight blaze was “very near” Ward’s oxygen mask.
The second metallurgist, Mario Lara, told the panel that while performing lab tests, he had managed to create a similar blaze with a glowing cigarette. Lara testified that while a lighted match took too long to produce the type of blaze present in the Corsair’s cockpit, the burning cigarette touched off the oxygen hose “immediately.” Asked whether he could determine the cause of the fire, Lara said “any flame or spark” — although he did not specifically blame it on a lit cigarette.
You can listen to a detailed and compelling oral history of the event from former Alameda mayor Terry LaCroix at the California Digital Story Telling Project website.
Also look for more details on the Notable California Air Disasters website and on this aviation history site.
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Were you living in Alameda at the time of the crash? What do you remember about it? Were you personally impacted by it or do you know someone who was?
Tell us in the comments.
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Alex Gronke
2:18 pm on Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Fascinating. I had always assumed the jet was out of the air station.
David Skaff
2:21 pm on Tuesday, February 7, 2012
More info, pictures and an illustration here: http://flattopshistorywarpolitics.yuku.com/topic/1835
sam
5:16 pm on Tuesday, February 7, 2012
boy do I remember this. Right down the street from my grandparents house, shattered windows in their house ....my mom and dad grabbing us kids getting us into the car to run over to check on them.Crazy for a little kid (10.at the time) but I remember it vividly
Kurt Sorensen
8:18 am on Wednesday, February 8, 2012
I was 11 and lived at an apartment building at 1615 central. I remember the building especially my window shaking. My mom took me to the corner of Grand and Central to watch all the fire trucks. We didn't find out what happened until the next day. Still think it about when I drive by.
Ken Harrison
4:39 pm on Wednesday, February 8, 2012
I was driving east on San Antonio just before Franklin Park when I saw this enormous ball of flame erupt straight ahead of me. My first thought was that the house I had purchased just a year earlier was going up in flames (it was in poor shape then), forgetting the turn that San Antonio takes at Morton, which took the flames out of my direct line of sight.. I went home and turned on my Bearcat scanner (to the old APD frequencies, or course) and almost immediately heard the words "airplane crash." My first thought was NAS Alameda, but I learned the next day that the plane came from Lemoore. IIRC, by that time people could get no closer than two blocks away. A harrowing night of flames, smoke, sirens and general noise. BTW, I'm still in that now-restored home.
Carol Parker
7:11 am on Thursday, March 8, 2012
Patch reader, THEO KARANTSALIS, who grew up in Alameda wrote to us to say he did some research to investigate whether there were any official records of the crash still around. Here were his findings:
Government records of 1973 Alameda jet crash “lost”
By THEO KARANTSALIS
Official records related to an investigation of an California jet crash have disaapeared.
“The entire record is missing and presumed lost,” a U.S. Navy spokesman wrote, March 6, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking a copy of the government's investigative report.
Records related to the A-73E Corsair II jet crash, which occurred in Alameda, Calif., on February 7, 1973, were held at a long-term storage facility in Maryland.
“To the extent that there were any pictures or documents concerning this incident in that file, they would have been lost with it," the report shows.
Colin
11:31 pm on Tuesday, March 13, 2012
I remember this clear as yesterday. I was at home watching Adam-12 with my parents when we heard the crash. My friends ran by the house and said come on. So we ran half a mile to the crash site and saw the disaster. My neighbor was a fireman who responded that night too. The next day me and my friends were on the front page of the new paper. I remember before the crash, delivering news papers to some of the people in the apartment building who were killed. It was very sad and tramatic to me as a kid.
Tom Brody
8:02 am on Wednesday, March 14, 2012
I remember the news story. At that time, I had been on Alameda Island on only two occasions. Once, was for a bicycle ride from Berkeley to San Leandro. The other time was for a family outing to a restaurant called, The Whale's Tail, which is now occupied by a Moroccan restaurant called, Abigail Cafe. Anyway, at the time of the crash I was busy at U.C.Berkeley with my senior undergraduate research project, purifying histidinol phosphate aminotransferase. This enzyme uses vitamin B6 as a cofactor.
Dave Michael
11:14 am on Friday, April 6, 2012
I was watching television, living on Pearl Street, when I heard a whistling sound like a bomb dropping, and then the lights went out. I visited the site a few days later and was amazed at how big the destruction was.
mary
1:09 am on Sunday, April 8, 2012
A group of friends and I were standing outside the Boys Club on Lincoln that night. I heard a high pitched sound, looked in it's direction, saw a flash, heard the boom and next thing I knew flames in the direction of Central. We all took off running, cutting thru the old Haight Elementary towards whatever had happened.
When I got there the building was on fire, people were running, screaming out of windows. I don't remember any emergency vehicles being there yet.
As that point we could still watch from accross the street. Watch was all we could do. It got hot very fast and as we were standing there, the whole front wall of the building started to collapse.
I don't remember exactly when emergency crews started to arrive, wasn't too many at this time. Like I said, it happened very fast.
All of us across the street had to move way down the block because of the heat and what I came to learn later was the smell of burning flesh.
I remember this clearly all these years later. I was 14.