ARMY & NAVY: Worst

ARMY & NAVY

Seventy miles out from San Pedro the U. S. Fleet, maneuvering last week as a rehearsal for spring war games, ran into a light rain that freshened into a gusty squall. Suddenly, from the droning plane formation above the Flagship Pennsylvania came an unrehearsed crash, flame flashing out across the dark sky. Down near the flagship, Plane 11-P-3, having collided in the wind with Plane 11-P-4, dropped into the sea like a burning meteor. Plane 11-P-4 plummeted into the water by its side.

The mighty fleet came to a stop, turned its searchlights on the spot. A boat lowered from the Pennsylvania fished out four struggling men who were carried to the hospital ship Relief, where Jesse Hanley Hester, 33, of San Diego, died of his injuries.

The maneuvers suspended, ships and aircraft abandoned their formations to search all night for the bodies of the ten other members of the two ships’ seven-man crews. Sadly next morning new CINCUS Claude Charles Bloch ordered the radio operators who were supposed to observe a war-time silence, to break it, announce to Washington and the world the worst airplane disaster in U. S. naval history.