Price of Recklessness

Courts martial voted criminals' penalties for careless, crackpot boys; still there was reckless flying. Probably there was no universal cure for the problem children whom the Army calls hedgehoppers, the Navy flat-hatters.

In Arizona few weeks ago handsome, 21-year-old 2nd Lieut. Howard Stittsworth, an instructor who should have known better, dove at an automobile on the highway and made a fatal miscalculation. His AT6 trainer flattened out lower than he had expected, ripped one wing through the automobile, decapitated its driver. Somehow, Instructor Stittsworth pulled out, managed to get back home, pulled by a propeller that had lost its tips on the concrete road.

Last fortnight Stittsworth's passenger, 2nd Lieut. Dean C. Fundingsland, was brought to trial. Because as senior officer aboard he had failed to stop his pilot's crazy flying, the court martial recommended that he be dismissed from the service. Last week the court martial heard Howard Stittsworth's case. It found him guilty of murder. Its recommendation: life imprisonment.

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