Anonymous

“ Although the military tractor in which Lieutenant Taliaferro met his untimely death remained on the surface of the bay, a crumpled mass of wreckage, for fully three minutes after it struck, both pilot and machine found a resting place on the bay bottom several minutes before a rescue boat arrived on the spot and up to an early hour this morning, neither the dead army aviator nor the biplane had been brought to the surface. ”

“ The wings were seen to crumple and then the machine slowly sank beneath the waters of the bay, the tail being the last to disappear. That Lieutenant Taliaferro either was instantly killed by the shock of impact or else rendered unconscious by his rapid fall, is the belief of Army aviators. They based their opinion on the fact that the aviator made no attempt to unbuckle the strap which held him in securely to his seat in the enclosed body of the tractor, and to scramble to temporary safety on top of the upper wing. ”

“ He served as a private, corporal and a sergeant in the one Hundred Tenth coast artillery from September 12, 1901, to September 8, 1908, reaching the grade of Second Lieutenant in the Twenty-first infantry August 2, 1908. ”