THE AIR AGE: Death in the Morning

Like lion cubs unleashed, San Fernando Valley schoolchildren in the Pacoima area of Los Angeles burst out of classrooms one morning last week to test returning sunshine and the soft sea air that had swept away a week's foul weather. They found the world newly come alive, trees and stuccoed buildings glistening magically in rain-washed brilliance. Overhead, winter's deep blue sky throbbed to the scream of jets and the snarl of conventional piston engines. But to the San Fernando Valley's children, raised around Southern California's cluster of major aircraft plants, the heavy...