British Tragedies

Charmed Life. Lieut. Commander George Pearson Glen Kidston, rich, young and debonair, was sometimes called "the man who cannot be killed." A naval cadet at 15, he was aboard the training ship Hogue when it was torpedoed, was rescued hours later and transferred to the Aboukir which likewise was torpedoed. A grown man and sportsman, he flew with the late Belgian Banker Alfred Loewenstein and crashed. He was piloting a speed boat at 60 m.p.h. when it broke in two. In 1929 he was one of two survivors of the crash of a Lufthansa plane in England which killed six. Lately he bought a specially built Lockheed monoplane, flew it from London to Cape Town in 6 1/2 days for a record, despite a crackup in Africa. Last week Commander Kidston and his friend Capt. T. A. Gladstone were flying from Johannesburg to Natal in a Puss Moth biplane. They encountered a duststorm in the Drakensberg Mountains. A wing was wrenched off. Commander Kidston and friend crashed. Both died.

Daisy. Flight Lieut. Henry Richard Danvers Waghorn, 27, was the "baby" of the British Schneider Trophy team of 1929, won the thunderous meet with a speed of 328 m.p.h. In the War he flew with the Royal Air Force, was once reprimanded for failing in a report to describe the nature of the ground where he had been forced down. Few days later he made another forced landing, rendered a florid description of the daisy field where it occurred. Henceforth his nickname was "Daisy." Last week, the day of the Kidston crash, "Daisy" Waghorn and Civilian E. R. D. Alexander were flight-testing a new bomber near Aldershot, England. It went out of control at about 300 ft. Both flyers jumped. Two days later Lieut. Waghorn died--41st fatality in the R. A. F. this year./-

Escape. Day after Lieut. Waghorn's crash, within a mile of the scene, two R. A. F. planes collided in midair. Both pilots jumped, were unhurt. Same day, 13,500 ft. over Banbury, two Bristol Bulldogs smacked together. Their pilots, too, jumped safely--making twelve R. A. F. pilots saved by parachute this year.

/-U. S. Army Air Corps deaths since Jan.1: nine. Lives saved by parachute: 16.

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