"The scene plan called for three airplanes, one with a parachute jumper and two with cameras, to take off from Clover Field and rendezvous three miles at sea of Point San Vicente. At that point the camera planes would spread apart while the plane with the jumper flew between them. When the jumper bailed out, the cameras would record the jump and descent from different angles. A speed boat cruised in the sea below, with another camera aboard to record the jump from sea level, and to pick up the jumper after he descended into the water.

"The three airplanes took off just before 4:00PM as the winter sun was approaching the horizon, In the lead was a Lockheed high-wing monoplane painted bright orange to contrast with the blue sky and sea in order to show up clearly on the black and white film. In addition to pilot Roscoe Turner, the Lockheed carried Jacob Tribdwasser, the parachute jumper, Fred White, a representative from the parachute company and Fred Osborne.  The other two planes were identical Stinson “Detroiters,” leased from Tanner Air Tours, and flown by Ross Cooke and Halleck Rouse.  Kenneth Hawks, who was acting as director and was brother of Howard Hawks and husband of actress Mary Astor, flew in one plane.  Max Gold, the assistant director on the film, rode in the other Stinson.  Cameraman George Eastman, assistant cameraman Ben Frankel, and prop man Tom Harris, rode in one of the Stinsons, while the other cameraman, Conrad Wells, his assistant Otto Jordan, and prop man Harry Johannes rode in the other Tanner airplane.  Newspaper accounts don’t say which group rode with which pilot, but each camera planed carried five men, and the doors were removed to give the camera men more freedom of action.

“When they reached the rendezvous point, Turner, in the faster airplane, was ahead while the two camera planes, cruising one above the other, headed directly into the brilliant sun….

“Perhaps the sun affected the vision of one or both of the pilots.  The higher airplane banked slightly to the right, and the one below suddenly swerved upward and to the left.  They were about 3,000 feet high when their wing tips touched, drew apart and then touched again.  When the second contact was made, one plane pivoted on its wing tip and collided with the other, almost nose to nose.  A burst of flame suddenly consumed both Stinsons as two twisting bodies fell or jumped from the fireball.  Then men were already dead as the two burning airplanes struck the water and sank in forty fathoms of the sea.”