the month over much of the United States. The route from Cleveland to Newark over the Allegheny Mountains was dubbed "Hell's Stretch" by airmail pilots. In the Western Zone, Arnold established his headquarters in Salt Lake City. In the winter of 1932–1933, he and many of his pilots had gained winter flying experience flying food-drop missions to aid Indian reservation settlements throughout the American Southwest isolated by blizzards. As a result of this experience and direct supervision, Arnold's zone was the only one in which a pilot was not killed. The Western Zone's first flights were made using 18 Boeing P-12 fighters, but these could carry a maximum of only 50 pounds of mail each, and even that amount made them tail-heavy. After one week they were replaced by Douglas O-38 variants including the Douglas O-35 and its bomber version, the B-7, and Douglas O-25C observation biplanes borrowed from the National Guard. In both the Western and Eastern zones, these became the aircraft of choice, modified to carry 160 pounds of mail in their rear cockpits, and in their nose (bombardier/navigator) compartments where those existed. Better-suited planes such as the new Martin YB-10 bomber and Curtiss A-12 Shrike ground attack aircraft were in insufficient numbers to be of practical use. Two YB-10s crashlanded when pilots forgot to lower its retractable landing gear, and there were only enough A-12s for a partial squadron in the Central Zone. On February 22 a young pilot departing Chicago in an O-39 flew into a snow storm over Deshler, Ohio, and became lost after his navigational radio failed. Fifty miles off course, he bailed out but his parachute caught on the tail section of his airplane and he was killed. That same day in Denison, Texas, another pilot attempting a forced landing was killed when his P-26A flipped over on soft turf. The next day, a Douglas C-29 Dolphin took off from Floyd Bennett Field, New York on a flight to Langley Field to ferry a mail aircraft and ditched when both engines failed a mile off of Rockaway Beach. Waiting for a rescue attempt in heavy seas, the passenger on the amphibian drowned. President Roosevelt, publicly embarrassed, ordered a meeting with Foulois that resulted in a reduction of routes and schedules (which were already only 60% of that flown by the airlines), and strict flight safety rules. Among the new rules were restrictions on