Based on the picture and according to the articles linked above, the fighters are Airco (De Havilland) DH-4Bs, while the bombers look like Handley-Page O-400s.



One article states that the Marine pilot that crashed might have mistaken his altitude based on his barometric altimeter reading (above sea level) versus his altitude above ground level (AGL.) That sounds rather unlikely in good weather; pilots would not be fixated on the altimeter but would have a good outside scan too. The other article indicates that the pilot was turning to come around for a landing, passed through some air turbulence and then crashed. This sounds more likely; in a turn your wings develop less lift, and passing through turbulence could disrupt the flow of air across the wing, reducing lift so much that you stall. And that sort of stall, in a turn near the ground, is called an "approach turn stall" and is very hard to get out of as you don't have enough altitude to recover. (I had a friend in flight training die in a crash that was determined to be caused by an approach turn stall.)



Okay, so I'm an aviation geek as well as a Civil War geek.