Transport: Death of Eaton

Out over Florida’s Biscayne Bay one day last week flew an airplane towing two gliders. In one was Sportsman Pilot Harold Bowen, in the other Warren Edwin Eaton, president of the Soaring Society of America, executive staff member of Norwich Pharmacal Co. (Unguentine), co-holder of the U. S. altitude record for sailplanes (TIME, Oct. 8). Newscameramen in an accompanying plane watched Eaton’s glider cut loose, prepared to photograph it gliding earthward. Suddenly the glider dipped sharply, flipped over on its back. Instruments tumbled out of it, then Pilot Eaton. The photographers waited for his parachute to blossom out. It never did. Pilot Eaton fell 1,200 ft. to his death in three feet of water on the bay’s edge.