The twin-engined Beechcraft rolling down the runway at Churchill under a lowering, leaden sky carried four assigned passengers and one hitchhiker. Captain Benjamin Scott Custer, onetime director of air safety in the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics, now attache in Ottawa, was returning from a cruise with Canada's aircraft carrier Magnificent (TIME, Sept. 13). Captain Sir Robert Stirling-Hamilton, the Royal Navy's observer, was Custer's guest. There were two U.S. Navy pilots. And there was Master Sergeant Jerome Scalise, 50, going home to Virginia for retirement. After 30 years in the Army, Scalise knew his way around: he could get...
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