Isachsen airstrip, Isachsen weather station, Ellef Ringnes Island, Northwest Territory, Canada, at 17:45 UTC. Despite crew attempts to keep the aircraft from drifting to the left, the port landing gear caught a snowbank (increasing veer); the port propeller struck a snowpack at 90 mph and 2800 rpm, ripping the engine from its mount and making the aircraft uncontrollable. Three crew were uninjured, but the aircraft was written off and abandoned on site. Its hull used for a temporary shelter, the wreckage remains on site. The C-82 had delivered an engine and parts to repair Douglas C-54D-5-DC Skymaster 42-72614, stranded with a failed number-two engine, and the Skymaster's position had necessitated a downwind takeoff. 25 May Silverplate Boeing B-29-35-MO Superfortress 44-27299 of the 97th Bomb Group at Biggs AFB in Texas, experienced a fire in its number-four (starboard outer) engine shortly after takeoff for a routine navigation and radar-training mission. Unable to extinguish the blaze, the crew bailed out. The navigator's parachute did not open, and he was killed; it is believed that he hit his head on the nosegear operating assembly while bailing out. The B-29 made a two-mile circle before coming down 35 miles northeast of El Paso, Texas and exploding. 30 MayArmstrong Whitworth Aircraft test pilot John O. "Jo" Lancaster was the first British pilot to save himself with an ejection seat when he bailed out of experimental twin-jet flying wing Armstrong Whitworth A.W.52 TS363 out of Bitteswell, using a "primitive" Martin-Baker Mk.1 seat when a pitch oscillation developed during a shallow dive from about 5,000 feet. 3 June The sole Sukhoi Su-15 (Aircraft P) twin-engine jet all-weather interceptor developed severe vibration during its 39th test flight and broke up in mid-air, forcing pilot S. N. Anokhin to eject. The project was abandoned with the second prototype unfinished. 13 June "SANTA MONICA, June 14 (AP) - A Navy transport, with seven men aboard dead, was located today as fog lifted from the Santa Monica mountains where the plane crashed late last night. The fog prevented an aerial search for much of today, but an Air Force plane finally spotted the still-smoking wreckage in Stone canyon, just below Mulholland drive, in the hills back of here. All seven dead were members of the naval reserve from the naval air station at Memphis, Tenn. Moffett field said those aboard were Lt. Garland P. Strickland Jr., Memphis, the pilot; Lt. Robert