AIR: Sergeant Peterson

At Gowen Field, near Boise, Idaho, one evening last week a bomber caught fire in the air. Spectators stood frozen as it careened to a landing, crashed through a parked plane, stopped—a blazing inferno. Even then all stood still except one.

Sergeant William Peterson did not wait to put on his pants, ran out alone, pulled five still-living men from the wreck, did not have time to save the others. And perhaps he could not have saved them anyway, because his arms were peeled from wrist to shoulder, his eyebrows singed, his eyes so badly burned he may never see again.

Army crashes in last fortnight’s news killed 103 Army men in 31 accidents from Maine to California, wrecked 15 bombers, eight fighter planes, one trainer, one transport, nine unspecified planes. The Army said that statistically this was just about as it had to be expected.