At Mitchel Field

A crowd on Mitchel Field, Long Island, watched a covey of 16 airplanes, some big, some small, all noisy, whirl once around the flying field and diminish until they were no more than a dash of black pepper on the horizon. The planes in that covey were the entrants in the first race of the Mitchel Field Airplane Tournament.

Suddenly a telephone rang in the judges' stand, a stammering voice said that there had been an accident. The crowd took up the rumor, as crowds will; people excitedly told each other that all 16 had crashed down together on the bleak Hempstead Moors and that all the pilots were dead. Pilot Basil Rowe, flying a Thomas Morse 54E plane with an Aero- marine motor, contradicted this extravagance by buzzing in a winner with an average speed of 102.9 miles an hour; Pilot W. L. Gilmore, in another Morse, was second; one of the 16 did not return. --a Bellanca plane, piloted by Clarence Chamberlain, carrying one Lawrence Buranelli, passenger. It had tipped a telephone wire with a right wing, come crashing down into the backyard of a deserted shanty. Passenger Buranelli, crushed under the unrecognizable grim huddle of the motor, was killed. Pilot Chamberlain was injured.

An ambulance went out to get Chamberlain. The next race was called--event for two, three, and four-passeger planes flown by civilians. Pilot C. S. ("Casey") Jones, hawk-faced, vigilant, won it in a Curtiss Oriole.

Two trim green Breguet planes, entered by the French Ministere de la Guerre, won the Liberty Motors Trophy Race (for observation planes) by a piece of teamwork, common enough in bicycle and running races, but unheard-of in the air. The first Breguet (Pilot, Captain d'Oisy) roared into the lead as a pacemaker, led off U. S. Pilot Henderson, while the second (Pilot, Captain Lemaitre) shot from behind to win.