but before they could get to the scene the plane was afire, its front buried in the ground, its tail caught in a tree." Killed were Lt. Stetson Brown, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, pilot; Staff Sgt. Ernest Endy, Oley, Pennsylvania; Pvt. Arthur Metz, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; Pvt. William Yost, McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania; and Cadet Paul Ampspaugh, Cleveland, Ohio. 19 May "A March field [sic] flying cadet, Douglas W. Smith, 23, parachuted to safety yesterday (19 May) a few moments before his plane crashed and burned four miles south of Riverside. The ship, a Boeing P-12 pursuit, crashed near the entrance of shaft No. 4 of the Metropolitan water district's Val Verde tunnel. Smith, who had leaped from the cockpit of the speedy ship at 1,500 feet elevation, landed uninjured 75 feet from the wreckage. Smith, attached to the Thirty-fourth Army attack squadron at March field, was flying in close formation fighting maneuvers with another ship at 3,000 feet when his ship went into a power dive. He failed to bring it out, and instead it started to spin. He jumped when he saw it was certain to crash. The youth, son of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur W. Smith, of Mill Valley, graduated from Stanford university [sic] in 1933. He was transferred to March field from Langley field [sic], in Virginia, two weeks ago. Brig-Gen. Henry Black Clagett, commander at March field, ordered a three-man board of inquiry to investigate the mishap." He was flying P-12C, 31-147, of the 34th Attack Squadron. This was the first production P-12C of 96 built. With this jump, Smith became Caterpillar Club member number 797. 25 May Maj. Hezekiah ("Hez") McClellan, (1894–1936), was killed while flight-testing Consolidated TPB-2A, 35-1, which crashed near Centerville, Ohio. Posthumously awarded the DFC, McClellan prepared early charts and records while pioneering Alaskan air routes. Sacramento Air Depot renamed McClellan Field on 1 December 1939. 3 June In a crash that closely parallels the loss of the Boeing 299, General Walther Wever, Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe, is killed at Dresden, Germany on take-off in a Heinkel He 70 when he fails to activate a lever in the cockpit that unlocks the control services. Wever, a supporter of four-engine long-range bomber design, had been developing a strategic bombing capability for the Luftwaffe, but following his death, Hermann Göring cancels these projects and the German Air Force never fields a viable strategic bomber.