When the Skyraider crashed into rough seas, the future actor and director—21 at the time—was en route back to Fort Ord after visiting his parents in Seattle.
On September 30, 1951, two AD-1 Skyraiders belonging to the US Navy took off from Naval Air Station Seattle for a routine flight to Mather Field in Sacramento. According to The Mercury News, Lt. F.C. Anderson, who was piloting one of the Skyraiders, found himself low on fuel and, after losing his wingman in the fog, ditched his aircraft off the Northern California coast. Although he and his passenger survived the crash, the swim back to shore near Point Reyes was challenging, and they barely succeeded.
The modern history of American filmmaking is far richer because the pilot and his passenger survived. In fact, it was an unknown US Army private named Clint Eastwood who was the passenger who came close to drowning on that autumn day in 1951.
When the Skyraider went down into choppy waters, the future actor and director, who was 21 years old at that time, was returning to Fort Ord after a visit to his parents in Seattle.
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The subsequent report from the Independent Journal, dated October 1, 1951, details Clint Eastwood’s aircraft accident near Point Reyes.
‘Two servicemen, who battled a thick gray fog and a strong surf for almost an hour last night following a plane landing in the ocean near the Marin shore, are returning to their service units today uninjured.
‘Army Pvt. Clinton Eastwood, who wandered into the RCA radio station at Point Reyes after struggling in the ocean, told radio operators he and the pilot were forced to land their AD bomber in the ocean and left on life rafts.
‘Eastwood said he was returning to Ford Ord from his house in Seattle when the mishap occurred.
‘The pilot, Naval Lt. F.C. Anderson, landed his life raft on the shore at Kehoe Ranch near Pierce Point. He is stationed at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento.’
“What was going through my mind was just a stark fear, a stark terror, because, (in the) first place, I didn’t know anything about aviation at that particular time—I was just hopping a ride,” Eastwood said in 2015, recalling the incident.
He described how he and Anderson stayed close with their life rafts until they got separated after encountering the waves near the rugged Marin coastline. Eastwood kept paddling through the powerful surf until he was tossed from the raft.
Eastwood informed Earl Foster, the radio operator present at the station during the incident, that whenever he moved closer to the shore, the powerful waves would pull him back out into the ocean. He mentioned that at one spot, he was nearly pulled under by the undertow.
Eastwood said that he couldn’t specify how long he had been in the water. However, when he reached the shore, he remembered collapsing to the ground and crawling to the station house.
As Eastwood entered the building, he was cold, wet, and in shock, and he spoke in a disjointed manner about the plane running low on fuel and how the pilot executed a dramatic landing on the rough sea. In reality, Anderson had successfully landed the Skyraider upright on the water.
After a short rest in the house where he was warmed up, Eastwood was taken to the Coast Guard Life Boat Station at Point Reyes, where he encountered Anderson. At the station, both men received medical care and began their journey back to their units.
“In those days, you could wear your uniform and get a free flight,” Eastwood said in a talk at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film & TV. “On the way back, they had one plane, a Douglas AD, sort of a torpedo bomber of the World War II vintage, and I thought I’d hitch on that. Everything went wrong. The radios went out. Oxygen ran out. And finally, we ran out of fuel up around Point Reyes, California, and went in the ocean. So we went swimming. It was late October or November. Very cold water. (I) found out many years later that it was a white shark breeding ground, but I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time, or I’d have just died.”
Photo by U.S. Navy, U.S. Government, and Westerns All’Italiana
