violently forward and smashed the canopy against the trapeze (knocking the pilot's helmet off). Schoch belly-landed on a dry lake bed at Muroc Air Force Base in California with little damage. 24 August Two accidents killed 13 U.S. airmen. Nine were killed aboard Army Douglas C-117A-1-DK Skytrain 45-2554 (c/n 18557/34212) near Newton, New Jersey, after a mid-air collision with Army North American B-25J-30-NC Mitchell 44-86870. The bomber had damage to a wingtip, but landed safely. Two C-47 Skytrains involved in the Berlin Airlift collided in mid-air near Ravolzhausen, killing two crew on each plane. Killed in the C-47s were Maj. Edwin C. Diltz, Capt. William R. Howard, Capt. Joel M. DeVolentine, and 1st Lt. William T. Lucas. Capt. Howard was piloting C-47A-80-DL 43-15116, and Capt. DeVolentine was flying C-47A-90-DL 43-16036 (c/n 20502). 3 September The only Silverplate Boeing B-29 Superfortress to be part of the strike package on both atomic missions over Japan, Boeing B-29-40-MO Superfortress 44-27353 (The Great Artiste) of the 509th Composite Group deployed to Goose Bay Air Base in Labrador for polar-navigation training, aborted a routine training flight due to an engine problem, made a downwind landing, touched down halfway down the runway, overran onto an unfinished extension and ground-looped to avoid a tractor. Structural damage to the wing joint was so severe that the Superfortress never flew again, and the airframe was scrapped at Goose Bay in September 1949. 4 September A U.S. Navy Vought F4U Corsair fighter from Naval Air Station New York crashed into a four-family home at 39–29 212th Street in Bayside, Queens, killing pilot 1st Lt. Roger Olsen, USMCR of New Rochelle, New York and three civilian women: Helen Raynor, Alice Cressmer, and Louise Paul. The pilot, a 1943 Pensacola graduate, was on the first day of a two-week reserve training course. The plane crashed one block from the Bayside station of the Long Island Rail Road. 15 September The death knell for the trouble-prone French Arsenal VB 10 program sounded when the third (some say first) production machine crashed after the failure of one of the coupled power plants caused an in-flight fire, killing pilot Henri Koechlin. "Six days later on 21 September 1948, the Arsenal VB 10 contract was cancelled. At the time of cancellation, four production VB 10 aircraft (including the one that crashed) had flown, six additional airframes had been completed, and a number of airframes were under