Somewhere

Somewhere, every day last week, Death found a victim in the air.

At Pocatello, Idaho, a big Fokker monoplane banked too steeply, tipped, put its nose into the ground, turned over three times. Four men, a mother and her two children were killed (five of them instantly).

Near Cleveland, two men were flying in a borrowed plane. A wing dropped off. Both men died in the crash.

Near Forchheim, Germany, a pilot and two passengers were killed when the great Lufthansa's regular Erfurt-Munich plane hit the earth.

A policeman and a fireman died in a plane crash at Melrose Park, Ill. Two planes collided during a race at Binghamton, N. Y. Val Miner, manager of the Southern New York Flying Club, Inc., was killed instantly.

Lieut. Joseph C. Soper, 25, U. S. Army pursuit pilot, was killed before the eyes of 15,000 when his Curtiss plane dived into Lake Erie during an exhibition at Camp Perry, Ohio.

At the aeronautical exposition at Mines Field, Los Angeles, Calif., Pilot Alden Baker and one passenger died in the crash of a Thunderbird plane.

Two high-school boys told no tales after an air ride at Otterbein, Ind.

A broken parachute strap brought death to 23-year-old Jumper Jack McEleven at Florence, S. C.

And there were other air accidents, last week, in both Europe and the U. S.

But saddest of all was the case of Luke Briotta, 13, deaf and dumb. Pilot Charles Potholm took him for a ride and went into a loop-the-loop with the idea of frightening him into speech and hearing. But the plane never came out of that loop; Luke Briotta is still deaf and dumb--and dead. There had been a sickening dive, an explosion and flames, an ugly hole in a swamp near Agawam, Mass. Pilot Potholm and another passenger also died.