From Santa Monica airport in his vintage WW2 restored fighter plane on March 5, 2015, he radioed the tower just minutes later saying something was wrong and he needed to land somewhere immediately. He managed to crash land on to a golf course, clipping a tree on the way down. Ford was critically injured, but a surgeon, who was on the course golfing when it crashed, pulled him out of the plane and helped him till paramedics arrived. Ford suffered amnesia in the accident and could not recall the events that led to the crash. Investigators studied the evidence and put the pieces together. One tiny part of the airplane, designed in the 1940's, had not been replaced or even checked since Ford bought the plane 17 years before.