The Hemisphere: Arms Plane

Over Cuba’s revolt-riddled Oriente province one night last week, an Aero Commander two-engine plane outran a pursuing government DC-3. Then, its gas gone, the plane tried to glide into the nearby U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo and nosed into the nearby bay. Watchers at the base’s radar screen saw it vanish—another mystery of the cloak-and-dagger Cuban civil war.

Less than 72 hours later, in the middle of cop-filled Havana. Charles Hormel, 45, U.S. citizen, coolly identified himself to a TIME correspondent as pilot of the plane. A rebel sympathizer who married into a wealthy Cuban family 17 years ago, Dayton-born Charles Hormel (distant kin to the meat-packing family) began flying to rebel territory last October. Twenty-seven times he flew an arms-laden plane, usually rented at Miami International Airport, to Cuba. After ditching on flight 28, he swam ashore, and the rebels put him on a bus for Havana. The Navy recovered the plane, found it loaded with M1 and M2 rifles, Thompson submachine guns and ammunition. Hormel flew in a commercial airliner to Miami. “I’ll be back in a week,” he said.