FOND DU LAC, Wis. -- It was a routine traffic stop along U.S. Highway 41 in Fond du Lac for Wisconsin State Patrol troopers Luke Newman and Chris Mondloch Sunday evening until something not-so-routine nearly hit them from out of the blue.

"There's a plane landing in front of us on 41. This isn't a good thing," Newman remembered thinking.

The dash cam of their patrol vehicle captured what the troopers saw -- a vintage aircraft landing on the highway in front of them with no working engine and with no warning.

"It was dead quiet. He wasn't making any noise at all," Mondloch said.

Piloting the World War II -era plane was Bill Leff and his 19-year-old son of Dayton, Ohio. They said the engine suddenly quit.

"I went under this powerline and stopped about over in front of that tourist information sign," Leff said. "As I was approaching and it looked like I might make it, then the engine finally quit. So the best solution was to land on the highway here."

With the engine dead, the pilot actually attempted to touch down on the highway when he noticed the troopers pulling out in front of him. He pulled up, essentially bouncing over the patrol car.

"The pilot goes over the other trooper and stalled vehicle and puts it down between a set of cars actually on the highway," Newman said.

"An old crop-duster trick -- and I'm not a crop duster -- is to bounce the plane intentionally to get it to go over, so I bounced over the trooper car and landed in front of him," Leff said.

No was was injured in the incident, but the plane did suffer some minor damage.

Highway Landing Creates Strong Buzz

The highway landing had people talking in places like the nearby Boda's Restaurant.

"Our office was buzzing about it and what-have-you," Joe Berres, a restaurant customer, said.

"That was the talk this morning at the breakfast table. Everybody couldn't believe that that's what happened and nobody got hurt," another customer, Iona Shaw, said.

While everyone seems to credit the pilot's skill with preventing a disaster, Leff believes there may be more to it.

"Luck has the most to do with it. You know, I did what I was supposed to do and the people on the road did what they were supposed to do and everybody avoided an accident," Leff said.

The plane is being held in a hangar at the Fond du Lac County airport while the Federal Aviation Administration investigates the incident.