; A Piper Cub plane carried thrCe men to

A Piper Cub plane carried thrCe men to their deaths Saturday, April 4, when it crashed in a field on the Clark farm, about a mile out of Washington on the Fodderstack road.

Papers in and around the wreckage identified the three men as Dean Hawley, Jr., believed to be the pilot, of Bye, N.Y.; Kenneth Shaften and Joel H. Hill, both of New York City.

All knowledge of the riders of the plane had to be obtained from papers, since all three men were killed instantly. The bodies of two were still in the plane when people first arrived on the scene; the body of the third had been thrown from the plane and was several hundred feet from the wreckage. *

Credentials give evidence that the three men had rented the plane; they were obviously accustomed to traveling for there were credit cards for hotels all over the countryy. Other papers indicated that their business was photography and they may have done some work for the government.

The three men were in the heavyweight class; and although the combined weights of the three passengers was almost equal to that of the plane, some experts said the plane was not overloaded, for it was a four-passenger cub,

It will be. almost impossible, state many opinions, to ever find out exactly what happened to cause the crash. Eye witnesses give many and various accounts: some say the plane was flying high and the motor cut off; another witness says positively the motor wis running when he saw' the crash; children playing near the scene state they thought the plane would crash into the barn and that smoke was streaming behind it; some witnesses say the plane circled twice before it came down; some say the plane plummeted straight into the earth.

The most generally accepted opinion is that first the plane started down, possibly with some engine fau^t, but that the pilot was making a definite attempt to to get but of the small valley and, perhaps, could not get the Cub to pick up altitude as fast as was needed.