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Show BALLOONS CRASH mm KILLED I TERRIFIC STORM SPREADS DEATH AND DESTRUCTION IN BELGIUM On Member of American Team Meets Instant Death in Air When Lightning Hit Big Bag Brussels. Five airmen, including two United States army lieutenants, lost their lives, another was seriously serious-ly injured, and five ballons were smashed on the ground or destroyed by lightening, in the James Gordon Bennett cup race, started .Sunday under the most adverse weather conditions con-ditions ever experienced in the history his-tory of the competition. The dead are: Lieutenant Olmstead and Lieutenant Lieuten-ant Choptaw of the United States army ballon S-6. Lieutenant Von Gruningen and Lieutenant Wehren of the Swiss balloon bal-loon Geneva. Fenaranda Barca of the Spanish ballon Polar. Gomez Guillamon, assistant to Barca, Bar-ca, In the Polar was seriously hurt. The United States navy A-6699 and the Fernande III, a French entry, en-try, piloted by G. Blanchet, were the only ballons reported up to noon Monday as having landed safely. The third American entrant in the race, the ballon St. Louis, never took the air, bursting .before the start from the pressure of her anchor rope. The S-6 was caught in the vortex of a terrific southwesterly gale in crossing the Belgium frontier, the rainstorm forcing the ballonist to unload all their ballast. When the ballon crashed at Nistelroda both I men were dead. 1 Lieutenant Olmstead was killed 1 outright when lightening struck the ballon, while Lieutenant Choptaw : suffered death when the S-6 fell, in ; the opinion of Dr. Van Binbergen ; of Nistelrode, who examined the , bodies. Lieutenant Olmstead's body was found under the bag in the basket, while that of his companion was about twenty-five feet away, as If the victim had jumped. |