Scenario by Sennett

As manager of the civilian Credit Union at the Navy's big Quonset Point Air Station near Providence, R.I., Gerald Lynch had reason to feel a little nervous when payday came around. Part of his job was cashing paychecks for Quonset's 4,000 civilian employees, and a year ago burglars had stolen $60,000 from the union's safe. Payday arrived last week, and Manager Lynch called in Thomas Smith, a burly civilian guard. Together, they picked up $100,000 in small bills and change from the Navy paymaster and drove back to the Credit Union's door.

A green 1950 Oldsmobile slammed to a stop beside Lynch's car. Two men with Halloween masks over their faces hopped out, jabbed snub-nosed revolvers at them and barked: "Give us the money. We're not kidding." Lynch and Smith promptly handed over their guns and the moneybags. "What are you going to do when a man pokes a gun in your ribs," asked Smith later, "be a Tom Mix?"

The rest of the scenario sounded as if it had been written by Mack Sennett. At the main gate, three startled marine guards jumped for safety as the getaway car shot through at 60 m.p.h. They hauled out their .45s, but the pieces were empty; the clips were in their belts (base regulations to avoid accidents). The police telephoned ahead to set up a roadblock. They were seconds too late; the green Oldsmobile got away. A few minutes later, a patrolman answered a fire alarm on a back road five miles from the base. It was the Oldsmobile, abandoned and burning. But when he tried to report it, his two-way radio wouldn't work; it took him precious minutes to call off the chase for the Oldsmobile and change it to a dark coupe that had been seen speeding away from the area where the Oldsmobile was found.

The new description had just gone over the air when a Providence cop saw two black coupes. He took off after them in a 70-mile-an-hour chase in which a second police car soon joined. The two-coupes finally stopped, with the first police car behind them. The second police car smashed into the first, reducing both to junk. The men they were chasing turned out to be FBI agents hurrying to Quonset to investigate the robbery.

The holdup men seemed to have made a clean getaway in New England's biggest holdup since the $1,500,000 Brink's robbery in 1950.

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