Fog, Terrain Hamper Crash Probe

CLEVELAND NATIONAL FOREST —  Hampered by bad weather and rugged canyon terrain, crews began the daunting task Thursday of examining and removing the wreckage of a Marine Corps plane that crashed a night earlier, killing two aboard.

Dense fog and drizzle cloaked the remote, wooded area where a two-seat, T-34C Beechcraft turboprop plane crashed Wednesday night after taking off from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station about 5 p.m., officials said.

The two Navy aviators killed in the crash were Lt. Michael Edward Moffat Jr., a 25-year-old San Diego native, and Lt. John Francis Bush, a 32-year-old Pennsylvania native, according to Maj. Margaret Kuhn, the El Toro public affairs spokeswoman.

The two pilots were en route to El Centro Naval Air Station in Imperial County to evaluate a carrier landing training program held at that base before their F-18 fighter squadron participated in it, Kuhn said. The squadron’s overall mission was to improve training techniques, she said.

The flight was supposed to take between 30 and 45 minutes, but the El Centro tower contacted their El Toro counterparts about 2 1/2 hours after takeoff to say the small, single-engine plane had not arrived, Kuhn said.

It was not clear Thursday if the plane made any radio contact before it crashed.

“We don’t know that right now,” said Cpl. Deanne McDaniel, another Marine spokeswoman. “That will come in the investigation.”

The son of a retired Navy lieutenant commander, Moffat grew up in the San Diego area and decided early in life that he wanted to fly military planes, according to Jim Roth, an attorney who spoke on behalf of the Moffat family.

Moffat graduated in 1989 from Mount Carmel High School, and received a business administration degree from the University of San Diego in 1993 before joining the Navy, Roth said. After F-18 fighter training in Florida and Texas, Moffat was assigned in recent months to the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 101, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at El Toro.

His dream came true Nov. 15 1996, when he earned his wings, Roth said.

“As soon as he was old enough to decide what he wanted to be, he wanted to be a Navy aviator,” Roth said. “He had a passion for life and a passion for flying. The only poetry that comes out of this is that he died doing what he loved most.”

Bush, a seven-year veteran of the Navy, is survived by his wife, Evelyn Thomas Bush. His family could not be reached for comment Thursday. Bush was the pilot of the craft, according to several sources.

The crew of an Orange County Sheriff’s Department helicopter spotted the plane’s wreckage about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday near the Maple Springs truck trail about four miles east of Silverado Canyon Road, according to Lt. Ron Wilkerson.

Ten minutes later, a Marine CH-46 helicopter training in the area arrived at the crash site and confirmed that the downed plane was the missing aircraft. The crash was about 11 miles northeast of the El Toro airstrip, Kuhn said.

Firefighters hiked through dense, dark growth to reach the site later that night, when they confirmed that both men aboard had perished in the fiery crash, according to Capt. Scott Brown of the Orange County Fire Authority.

“There was a huge fire, but it was contained,” said Brown, adding that recent rains made for conditions that helped prevent a wildfire. “The fire consumed the fuel and went out on its own. If this had been during the summer we could have had some real problems.”

The terrain made access a challenge, Brown said.

“It’s a very difficult area to work, especially at night with no light,” he said.

Armed military patrols were in the area overnight Wednesday and all day Thursday to protect the charred crash site and the bodies, officials said. Orange County coroner’s deputies arrived at the remote scene Thursday morning to examine the bodies before their removal.

Investigators will sift through the wreckage and review the flight path to attempt to determine what went wrong, officials said. Early reports by firefighters of downed power lines in the area will be checked to see if there is a link to the crash.

Besides the difficult recovery effort, El Toro personnel were also grappling Thursday with grief and loss, Kuhn said.

“It’s been a rough morning here,” she said.