Qualla: 1959 San Diego F3H Crash

1959 San Diego F3H Crash: Introduction

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. Ensign Albert Joseph Hickman opened his cockpit canopy and waved. Below him, children played in the schoolyard of Hawthorne Elementary, unaware that a stricken fighter jet was plummeting toward them. Hickman could have pulled the ejection handle. At his altitude, he might have survived. Instead, the 21-year-old pilot from Sioux City, Iowa, kept his hands on the controls, steering his failing McDonnell F3H-2N Demon away from the school. He cleared the fence by feet. He did not survive. On December 4, 1959, Ensign Hickman became a different kind of hero, the kind who measures his own life against hundreds of others and makes the harder choice.

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Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

1959 San Diego F3H Crash: A Morning Like Any Other

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RightCowLeftCoast, CC BY-SA 4.0. Hickman had graduated from Sioux City's Central High School in 1956 and enlisted in the Navy before completing his studies. By December 1959, he was assigned to VF-121 at Naval Air Station Miramar, practicing carrier landings in the F3H Demon. The Demon was a single-seat fighter ...

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Image: RightCowLeftCoast | CC BY-SA 4.0

1959 San Diego F3H Crash: Seven Hundred Lives

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RightCowLeftCoast, CC BY-SA 4.0. Estimates suggest as many as 700 people were on the ground in the immediate area, many of them children. Hickman had seconds to decide. Ejection might have worked. Might not. The aircraft would continue on its ballistic path, unguided, into the populated neighborhood. Into the sc...

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Image: RightCowLeftCoast | CC BY-SA 4.0

1959 San Diego F3H Crash: Memory in Concrete and Steel

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RightCowLeftCoast, CC BY-SA 4.0. San Diego has not forgotten Albert Hickman. In 1962, an American Legion post in Kearny Mesa was dedicated in his name. In 1971, an elementary school in the Mira Mesa neighborhood was named Hickman Elementary. In 1994, on land leased from the Navy, the city dedicated the Hickman F...

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Image: RightCowLeftCoast | CC BY-SA 4.0

1959 San Diego F3H Crash: History Repeating

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RightCowLeftCoast, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nearly fifty years later, another military jet crashed in San Diego under eerily similar circumstances. On December 8, 2008, an F/A-18 Hornet from Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101 at Miramar experienced multiple engine failures. Lieutenant Dan Neubauer faced the same c...

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Image: RightCowLeftCoast | CC BY-SA 4.0