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he flew 146 mph at 21,000 feet, then on January 18, 1919, he attained an altitude of 19,500 feet with two passengers.
That summer Schroeder supervised the installation of a supercharged Liberty-12 engine in a LePere biplane for special altitude tests.  On August 2nd he and Lt. George W. Elfrey flew this plane at 137 mph at 18,400 feet.  Later that month Schroeder won the New York-to-Toronto Race, flying a Vought VE-7 plane.  On September 6th he and Lt. Elfrey set a new two man altitude record of 29,000 feet with the Liberty-LePere plane.  On September 24th they exceeded this mark by flying to 31,800 feet, then on October 4th they broke their own record again by flying to 33,335 feet.
On February 27, 1920, while flying solo and trying to reach 40,000 feet, Schroeder narrowly escaped with his life when he ran out of oxygen at 36,020 feet, lost consciousness and the plane fell out of control to about 2,000 feet when he recovered enough to make a landing.  When reached he was in a coma, his frozen wide open, and serious heart damage resulted, from which he never fully recovered.
While at McCook Field Schroeder was active in the initiation of parachute flares, landing lights, fuel flow meters, free-type parachute packs,super[[strikethrough]] sh [[/strikethrough]]charging, controllable-pitch propellers and flight instrumentation.  He organized speed trails at the 30,000 foot levels to determine the possibility of high altitude distance flying and envisioned the need for supercharging and pressurized cabins.  During 1919 he also devised the first "black box," a container with all flight instruments to continuously record all test results in flight automatically.  His flight-performance test methods remained in use for many years.
Schroeder accepted a commission as a Reserve Officer in 1921 and left active service to organize the Aviation Department of Underwriters Laboratory in Chicago to register pilots and aircraft in the United States.Underwriters continued this work until the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce took over in 1926.
In May, 1925, Schroeder had joined the Ford Motor Company where he assisted in the development and test of the Ford-Stout all-metal planes, including the famous
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