BRITAIN/INTERNATIONAL: Four died as plane 'dropped like stone'.

VERDICTS of accidental death were yesterday recorded on three parachutists and a pilot after their light aircraft "dropped like a stone" eight minutes after take-off.

One of them was a 17-year-old girl who jumped to raise cash for charity after undergoing open heart surgery.

Claire Smith was 14 when she had surgery and began jumping to raise cash for the British Heart Foundation.

The teenager, from Winkleigh, Devon, died with her father, 42-year-old welder Richard Smith, on the flight which crashed in a Devon field. The pilot, Paul Norman, 52, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, chief scientist at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Porton Down, also died at the scene.

Royal Marine officer Major Mike Wills, 44, from Cove, near Tiverton, Devon, survived the crash, but died later in hospital from multiple injuries.

Two other parachutists survived when the single-engined Cessna 206 went down near Beacon village on June 27 2004.

They were 26-year-old Daniel Batchelor, from Taunton, Somerset, and Daniel Greening, then 16, from Kingsteignton, Devon, making his first jump - in tandem with Major Wills - to raise cash for the RNLI.

The inquest in Exeter, Devon, heard the engine was "coughing and spluttering" and the aircraft "dropped like a stone" and crashed.

An Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) probe said there was no conclusive cause for engine power loss.

The jury concluded the loss of engine power was caused by fuel starvation.