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comfortable did not complain. The usual stop was made at Philadelphia to unload and load mail, then they took off for Belmont Park, Long Island, where they found some unseasonable snow on the ground. They were met by the press and photographers with sandwiches and hot coffee. Fairbanks was so delighted he did a one-legged hilarious stand on the propeller hub of the plane before the cameras, and jokingly told the press he had flown in from Washington with this "nutty aviator" named DeHart who had taken great pains to make a hair raising dive at every cemetery along the way. The usual Fairbanks act drew much publicity, then he rushed off for his scheduled bond-selling tour of New York City.
On March 20, 1919, DeHart set a new air mail speed record of 2 hours, 14 minutes from New York to Washington, flying in spite of wind, patches of rain and snow. On March twenty-ninth he made the flight from New York to Washington in winds of hurricane velocity, from 75 to 80 m.p.h. On his regular runs DeHart was accustomed to flying Curtiss JN type planes with 150 h.p. Hispano-Suiza engines, but on this day he flew a much heavier and more powerful Curtiss type R with a Liberty 400 h.p. engine. His assignment to this plane for that flight, however, was an added hazard to DeHart because he had never flown the plane before, nor one as powerful, also it had a bad reputation for being difficult to land, even under favorable flying conditions. With the help of four husky crew members he taxied out on the field at Belmont Park and took off, while fellow pilot Ira Biffle was to leave Washington for New York at the same time. DeHart landed at Philadelphia and stopped after an unusually short roll. Not having expected him in that weather the ground crew was nowhere in sight. While DeHart remained waiting for help a heavy gust tilted him over on one wing, broke the wing skid, and damaged the stabilizer. The ground crew finally saw him and came to his aid. After inspecting the damage, the plane was considered flyable so he took off for Washington. There he had a much more difficult problem in landing, for College

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