Most of the plane's damage was on the underbelly of the craft when
the landing gear failed to deploy, Riverside County Deputy Sheriff
Ryan Renick said.



So this genius compounded the problem of running out of fuel with
forgetting to retract his landing gear for the emergency landing...
Fortunately for him, Darwin's attempt to remove him from the
population pool failed.

From what I read, he remembered very well to retract the gear prior to
landing.