NAVY: Example

At the Navy's Air Station at Pensacola, Fla. two white-faced ensigns with new golden wings sparkling on the breasts of their uniforms were tried by court-martial. On a bright March morning Ensign Paul C. Brown, 22, had dived a training plane low over farm workers in a turnip field near Robertsdale, Ala., because it was fun to scare them. Ensign Joseph C. Thompson, 23, riding with him, had done nothing to make him stop. On the dive on the frightened workers, Pilot Brown flew too low, scraped the ground. His wing sliced the head off a woman worker, 38-year-old mother of six.

Last week the drastic sentence of the court-martial was back in Pensacola, approved by the President. Both officers were dismissed from the service. Both were sentenced to penal terms at hard labor: Brown to serve two years, Thompson one. Under guard of Marines, the disgraced officers set out for the naval prison at Portsmouth, N.H.