Transport: I Shiver

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When small, smiling Francisco ("Pancho") Sarabia set his racing plane down fast but safely at Floyd Bennett Field three weeks ago, his friends, relatives and admirers waiting there cheered him wildly. They were glad because their Pancho had set a new non-stop record for the Mexico City-New York City flight. And they were glad for another reason. Pancho's five-year-old plane had a bad history of forced landings and unfinished races, was supposed to be jinxed. Pancho had flouted the jinx.

But one man was not quite reassured. Alberto Salinas Carranza, chief of Mexico's aviation, sent a message to Sarabia by air mail: "I shiver at hearing that you intend to return from Washington nonstop. . . . Continue flying with your head and do not permit your heart to intervene. Conserve yourself for our pride, the satisfaction of your family and the envy of the birds."

Ready to start home, Sarabia climbed into his racer at Washington's Boiling Field early one morning last week, headed into the wind, opened his throttle. The ship soared out over the calm, muddy waters of the Potomac.

At an altitude of less than 100 ft., something happened. The motor sputtered, the plane faltered, dived into the river, settled with its nose on the bottom, its tail sticking out of water. The watchers at Boiling Field, including the flier's wife and son, saw it all. Dr. Luis Quintanilla, counselor of the Mexican Embassy, and Naval Attache Manuel Zermeno jumped into automobiles, jounced over fields to the riverbank. Quintanilla and Zermeno flung off their coats, plunged in, swam to the plane, tried to pull Sarabia out. But he was inert, wedged in the cockpit, his head pressed against the instrument panel. When the plane had been towed ashore and Sarabia's body extricated, a coroner decided that Sarabia had drowned.

Thus died Mexico's ace aviator, founder-president of one of Mexico's biggest native-owned airlines (TIME, June 5). At Franklin Roosevelt's order, the body was returned to Mexico in one of the U. S. Army's big Boeing bombers.

At latest reports no definite cause for the crash had been ascertained. But when Mexico City heard the news it was inconsolably angry. A vegetable vendor yelled, "The gringos killed him!" A Mexican newspaper printed dark hints which added up to charges of sabotage. The Mexican Ambassador in Washington called these accusations "imbecile." But in Mexico City a mob of students stoned a U. S. school and a cordon of police was thrown around the U. S. Embassy. And when the U. S. bomber bearing the flier's body reached the Mexican capital, that too was pelted with stones.