July 29, 1947, was his first time ever flying an airplane. Aug. 16, 2008, was the first time he ever crashed.

Minetto native and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Fred Bullard was participating in an aerial competition at the Oswego County Airport Saturday when his engine failed, forcing him to pull off an emergency landing in an open field in the town of Volney.

Bullard, 77, was flying with his friend Rowland Pomerleau, 81, of Central Square, when the accident occurred.

“The engine failed. There wasn’t anything you could do about it,” Bullard said. “It looks like we came out of it pretty good.”

Both men were extricated from the 1971 Ralleye Minerva single-engine plane and airlifted to University Hospital. Bullard suffered a lacerated scalp at his hairline and two black eyes. He spent nearly five hours in the emergency room.

“They put in I don’t know how many stitches,” Bullard said. Two men worked on sewing up his scalp for roughly three hours and he was released around midnight.

“As I should say, my head shouldn’t fall off in the next couple of days,” Bullard said. “So far, everything has been fine.”

Rowland’s injuries were slightly worse than Bullard’s and he was released Monday morning from the hospital. Bullard said his friend bit his tongue during the crash and swallowed a great deal of blood. “His stomach, quite naturally, was off,” Bullard said. Rowland also suffered from a cut in his left arm.

Bullard believes that his 62 years of flying, 21 years of service in the Air Force and 91 combat missions aided him in landing his plane safely. “I would say yes it really helped a lot,” he said. “It helped with being scared. You just took the situation, analyzed it and hoped it would turn out the way it did.”

The pilot noted that he completed intensive training and ran through numerous emergency procedures he had to recite verbatim while in the Air Force.

Saturday afternoon, Bullard was participating in a three-part aerial contest with 13 or 14 other pilots. He said the guys get together once a year to hold this competition and then have a cookout afterward. The first part of the contest involved hitting a 100-foot circle on the ground with 1 ½ to 2-pound bags filled with lye.

“We put a piece of tape around the bag then toss them out of the window,” Bullard said, noting each plane receives three bags of lye. Whom ever has the best two out of three hits wins that portion of the contest. The other two segments involved popping a balloon with the plane’s propeller and landing on a line drawn across the runway.

It was around 3:30 p.m. and Bullard was making his second pass to drop another bag of lye. He was approximately 400 feet in the air when his engine began to sputter. “My engine blew up. I had only one choice,” Bullard said. “That was to go down.”

On its way toward the ground, the plane, which was traveling south, struck the tops of several small trees and nosed into the ground.  It then spun around and the Minerva came to rest right side up, facing the northwest.

Bullard said he did not have time to panic as the plane was descending; his thoughts focused on the procedure involving engine failure he learned those many years ago while in the Air Force.

“You want to make sure you fly the airplane into the ground or as some people say, all the way into the crash,” Bullard said, noting that one should not stop flying the machine halfway through the descent. “I just concentrated on getting it down as safely as I could.”

Bullard said that every pilot is aware of the possibility of an airplane crash, describing it as “just one of those things that can happen.” He compared this to anyone driving a car. He noted what one does at the time of engine failure affects the outcome.

The Federal Aviation Administration has already examined Bullard’s airplane. The National Transportation Safety Board will also investigate the machine to conclude why the crash happened. Then they will bring the Minerva back to Bullard’s hangar. After the organizations have reached their conclusion on the cause of the crash, they will look to see how many other planes could potentially have the same problem.

“It’s a good analysis,” Bullard said. “A lot of good will come out of this.”

Bullard’s Minerva is totaled and his near-death experience will not dissuade him from continuing his nearly life-long passion.

“No, I won’t stop flying,” he said Monday afternoon.