How a Catastrophic Hydraulic Failure Sent Two Navy Airmen Into the California Desert in January 1969
January 1969. The Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range, a sun-blasted expanse of granite and dune southeast of California’s Salton Sea. A US Navy F-4 Phantom II was somewhere over the range when its hydraulic systems began to fail — not one circuit, but all of them. With the control surfaces going slack and the aircraft becoming unresponsive, the two men aboard had one option left. The pilot — Jim Ginn Sr., a Navy aviator whose son would later recount the story — pulled the handle. What happened next illustrates, with painful clarity, that the ejection sequence is only the beginning of a pilot’s problems.
The F-4 Phantom II was the backbone of US Navy and Marine Corps aviation through the 1960s and 1970s. Designed by McDonnell Aircraft and introduced in 1960, the twin-engine, two-seat fighter-bomber served as fleet air defense interceptor, ground attack platform, and photo reconnaissance aircraft across virtually every theater where American power projected. By January 1969, the Navy’s F-4 crews were flying combat missions over North Vietnam while simultaneously conducting routine training operations in the continental US — including live-fire exercises over the ranges of Southern California. The Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range, located near the towns of Glamis and El Centro and close to the Arizona border at Yuma, was one such training ground.
The Ejection Over Chocolate Mountain
Jim Ginn’s account of his father’s January 1969 ejection — shared on Quora in response to questions about pilot culpability following an ejection — is one of the more vivid first-person-adjacent descriptions of what happens when a round parachute meets a California granite boulder.
The cause of the ejection was a catastrophic hydraulic leak that compromised all systems simultaneously. On the F-4 Phantom, hydraulic pressure actuates the control surfaces: without it, the aircraft becomes a ballistic object. With recovery impossible, both the pilot and his Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) initiated ejection. In a two-seat aircraft like the Phantom, the seats are sequenced to eject at different angles, preventing a midair collision between the two crew members — a procedure that in this case resulted in the two men landing miles apart.
The pilot’s descent brought him toward a mountainside rather than flat desert. The parachutes in use at the time were the so-called “round” type — non-steerable canopies that descend more or less vertically, offering the occupant little ability to steer clear of obstacles. He struck the face of a large granite boulder. The impact was sufficient to deflate the canopy, which had the effect of slowing his lateral momentum — but he then fell approximately 20 feet straight down, unsupported, onto the desert floor below. Both bones in his right leg snapped at the shin.
His RIO came down approximately two miles away. The two men did not see each other again until they were reunited at the hospital.
The subsequent investigation at Balboa Naval Hospital — where a second surgical team had to re-break and reset the leg after the first setting was done incorrectly — cleared the pilot of any wrongdoing. The hydraulic failure was determined to be mechanical and not the result of crew error.
Of the ejection sequence itself, Ginn later described it to his son as “four seconds of extreme violence” — noise, disorientation, physical shock — followed by an abrupt silence as he floated clear of the aircraft. He watched the Phantom auger into the sand dunes below him. He did not hear the explosion.
The aftermath was distinctly unglamorous. The Navy, with its full inventory of aircraft and helicopters, transported the injured pilot from El Centro to the naval hospital in San Diego by ambulance — a three-hour road trip. The family received the news not through any formal notification system, but via a squadron colleague who telephoned the house and assumed incorrectly that the family already knew.
What This Story Tells Us About Ejection Seat Survival
The survival sequence in an ejection does not end when the seat fires. The Martin-Baker Mk. H-5 ejection seats installed in US Navy F-4 Phantoms at the time were designed to save lives at speed and altitude, and they performed that function. The H-5 was not a true zero-zero seat — it required the aircraft to be moving at approximately 90 knots to guarantee a safe ejection — but at operational speeds over the gunnery range it would have functioned as intended. (The transition to the improved Mk. H-7, a rocket-assisted zero-zero seat, was underway in the Navy’s F-4 fleet during 1969 but was not complete until 1970; depending on the specific aircraft, either seat may have been installed.) But the parachute descent — particularly with round, non-steerable canopies — introduced a second set of hazards entirely outside the pilot’s control.
Statistics on ejection seat injuries from the Vietnam era bear this out. A significant proportion of injuries sustained during successful ejections resulted not from the seat firing sequence but from the landing — spinal compression, leg fractures, and head injuries on uneven terrain were common. The shift to more advanced canopies with steering capability, and later to JATO-assisted seats with more predictable trajectories, addressed some of these risks. But in 1969, a pilot descending over mountainous desert had limited options once the canopy opened.
Ginn Sr. returned to flight status after his leg healed and flew F-4s in the Navy for another ten years before transitioning to a civilian career flying corporate Gulfstream aircraft — the G-II, G-III, G-IV, and G-V — for an additional eighteen years. The parts of his F-4, including the control column and some instrument gauges, reportedly ended up on display at a bar in Glamis — though Ginn himself noted he could not confirm this independently.
FAQ: F-4 Phantom II Ejections and Crew Survival
Is a pilot punished for ejecting from a military aircraft?
Ejections are investigated to determine whether crew error contributed to the loss of the aircraft, but an ejection resulting from mechanical failure — such as a hydraulic system failure — does not result in punishment. The pilot in this account was cleared by investigators at Balboa Naval Hospital following a thorough review of the circumstances.
How dangerous was ejecting from an F-4 Phantom II?
The ejection sequence itself was violent but survivable. The greater risk in many cases came from the parachute descent — particularly over rough terrain. Round, non-steerable parachutes gave pilots almost no control over where they landed, making rocky or mountainous terrain especially hazardous. Leg fractures, spinal injuries, and head trauma on landing were common outcomes even from otherwise successful ejections.
What caused most F-4 Phantom ejections during training?
Training ejections in the F-4 were most commonly caused by engine failure, hydraulic system failures, and mid-air collisions — the last being a known hazard in high-tempo training environments. The F-4’s powerful but fuel-thirsty J79 engines also created flame-out risks, particularly during low-altitude maneuvering.
What happened to the RIO in this incident?
The Radar Intercept Officer ejected successfully and landed approximately two miles from the pilot. He sustained a head injury but was otherwise unharmed. The two men were reunited at the hospital.
Modeler’s Corner
The F-4 Phantom II is among the most extensively kitted aircraft in scale modeling. For builders interested in Navy F-4B or F-4J markings from the late 1960s — the period covering this incident — two kits stand out. Tamiya’s 1/32 F-4B Phantom II (kit no. 60305) is the gold standard at the large scale, suitable for experienced modelers, and offers superb surface detail. For a more approachable build, Academy’s 1/48 F-4B (kit no. 12232) captures the period markings accurately at a fraction of the cost and effort.
Further Reading
- F-4 Phantom: A Pilot’s Story — Robert Prest (Pen & Sword Aviation). First-person account from a British Phantom pilot with useful comparative material on ejection procedures.
- Phantom: The Story of the F-4 Fighter-Bomber — Brian Davies (Osprey Publishing). Solid general history covering US Navy operations and the aircraft’s development.
- Scream of Eagles: The Creation of Top Gun and the US Air Force’s Dogfighting Revival — Robert K. Wilcox (Wiley). Covers the Naval Air Station Miramar culture of the late 1960s F-4 community in detail, providing context for what life in a Navy Phantom squadron looked like in 1969.
