Canoga Park Pilot, 55, Dies in Air Show Crash at El Toro Base

A vintage World War II trainer airplane participating in an air show at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station crashed into an empty chapel at the base Saturday, killing the 55-year-old pilot from Canoga Park and his passenger. No one on the ground was hurt.

According to Marine officials, the single-engine plane, a privately owned AT6-SNJ, had just taken off and was preparing to fly over the 36th annual air show when it apparently lost power, snagged a power line, smacked into the street and slid into the chapel.

The pilot was identified as Merrel Richard Gossman, a former Marine pilot who had flown for United and Aloha airlines. The passenger was identified as Robert G. Arrowsmith, 25, a Navy hospitalman stationed at El Toro.

Condor Squadron Members

Marine spokesman Lt. Peter D. Larato said Gossman and Arrowsmith were members of the Condor Squadron, a Van Nuys Airport-based club of former fighter pilots that performs mock dogfights in the vintage planes at air shows. Gossman owned the plane, a military scout training craft used during World War II.

Thousands of people who were lined up in their vehicles to enter the base for the annual show watched as the two-seater aircraft narrowly missed a gymnasium at the facility’s northwest corner. The crash ignited a fire that destroyed the white-windowed chapel built in 1946.

Master Sgt. Jack Michalski said the plane had just taken off and was preparing to fly over the air show’s spectator area when it apparently lost power.

“He did a left turn and then went into a spin,� Michalski said, “and then went into a spin stall. The motor stalled and he was spinning, but that was not a stunt.�

Capt. Gordon Read, the base chaplain, said no one was in the chapel when the plane crashed shortly before 10 a.m.

However, a man delivering flowers was on the church grounds when the plane plunged through the chapel, its engine pummeling through a wall a few feet from the altar, Read said.

The florist, Gary A. Downe of Tustin, was not injured, although he was visibly shaken by the sight, according to officials who interviewed him.

“What I am told is that he had just delivered flowers to the chapel, had walked out and had been out about 15 seconds before the plane crashed,� Michalski said. “One very, very lucky person.�

The air show had not started at the time of the crash, Michalski said, but the pilot was preparing to fly over the crowd, signaling his arrival.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the cause of the crash.

Parts of the airplane were strewn about the lawn outside the small wood-framed chapel. Damage was estimated at $476,000, a military spokesman said.

Gossman, a floor-covering contractor, was the first to take off among a number of Condor Squadron members who were to participate in the show, Michalski said.

The wry-humored Gossman once flew his AT-6 from Van Nuys to London and back by way of Canada, Iceland and Greenland alone and, last year, remarked dryly: “Lindbergh didn’t take anybody.�

Times staff writers Ray Perez and T.W. McGarry contributed to this story.