ARMED FORCES: Crash Landing

Just after 10 one morning last week, Mrs. Mary S. Dempsey, 38, and Mrs. Bertha E. Johnston, 53, teed off down the tree-lined seventh fairway of the Timuquana Country Club at Jacksonville. At the same time, at the nearby Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Ensign Charles L. Greenwood took off in a Corsair fighter on a training mission.

Minutes later the two women lined their second shots toward the green. Overhead the Corsair’s engine coughed and failed. Greenwood rolled the fighter into a vertical bank, hoping to get back to the airfield, or at least to ditch in the St. Johns River. He realized that he could not make it, looked desperately below, headed for the only open spot.

The two women, unaware of the plane, were walking down the fairway again, chatting. Their caddy, off to one side, saw the Corsair bearing silently down from behind, billowing smoke. His warning shout was carried away by the wind. The women did not have a chance to turn their heads before they were struck and killed by the windmilling propeller. The plane plowed on across the green sod, crashed into a pine grove and burst into flames.

Pilot Greenwood escaped with minor injuries and was watching the fire when the caddy rushed up with his news. “I didn’t see them,” Greenwood sobbed. “I didn’t see them.”