CYPRUS: Grounded Bomber

In the chill November night, a squadron of Canberra bombers taxied down the runway of the R.A.F. base outside Nicosia. Their orders were to bomb the Inshass airfield outside Cairo. Suddenly one bomber slumped nose-down on the runway. Four minutes later, 24-year-old Pilot Dennis Raymond Kenyon faced Squadron Leader Norman Hartley. "What's the matter, Dennis?" Hartley demanded. "Did you push the wrong button?" Dennis Kenyon threw his helmet on the ground and burst into incoherent tears. Later he told Hartley that he had deliberately retracted his wheels because "I did not altogether approve of what we were doing in Egypt," and blurted that he had contemplated suicide after he climbed out of his wrecked plane.

In Nicosia last week Flying Officer Kenyon went before a court-martial. Kenyon insisted he had just pushed the wrong button by mistake. He was upset and nervous, the cockpit was dark, he felt hurried because the briefing had run behind schedule, the flap and undercarriage buttons were close together. Said Kenyon: "I have no political or religious views; I gave that reason merely because I was dreadfully worried over my tragic mistake. It was far better, I thought, to say I had intentionally caused the Canberra damage rather than to say I had made a mistake and was incompetent." The prosecutor, pointing out that Kenyon by his own admission had been unable to sleep or eat for days, charged that Kenyon had wrecked his plane out of simple fear.

After deliberating for an hour, the court-martial found Kenyon guilty of acting "willfully" to avoid carrying out "a warlike operation in the air when under orders." Sentence: dismissal from the service and one year in jail.