Crisfield, suffering from a fractured skull and internal damages." He had departed Newark at 1600 hours after flights to the west had been suspended for several hours because of bad weather over the mountains with more coming in from that direction. 22 February "Lieut. R. M. Barton, speeding along the Jacksonville-Richmond route, was forced to land at Cocoa, Fla., by a heavy fog. He made a safe landing." 23 February A US Army Air Corps Curtiss O-39 Falcon, 32-219, assigned to the air mail service crashes in bad weather near Fremont, Ohio, with pilot Lt. Norman R. Burnett suffering a fractured leg upon descending by parachute. A news report states that "One ankle was broken and he suffered exposure to the bitter cold for five hours while dragging himself to a farmhouse." According to an Associated Press item, the pilot was taken to Memorial Hospital in Fremont from where he reported his condition to superior officers in Cleveland. "At the time of the accident he was flying an empty run from Cleveland to Chicago." Joe Baugher cites crash date as 23 August 1934. 23 February Three Air Corps crew are forced down in an aircraft in the Atlantic off of Rockaway Point, New York, whilst en route from Mitchel Field, New York, to Langley Field, Virginia, to pick up mail planes. Planes and vessels searched the sea off New York for the body of Lieutenant George F. McDermott, described by the press as the fifth flier to die in connection with the army's task of carrying the air mail. Forced down amidst "crashing waves", McDermott's two companions, Lieutenants J. H. Rothrock and W. S. Pocock, were picked up by the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Bernadou. They were reported to be "weak from exposure." The vessel could not find McDermott, nor salvage the disintegrating plane. "McDermott, whose family lives in Greenfield, Pa., slipped to his death in the icy Atlantic hours after the plane faltered and alighted. His companions, clad in heavy flying suits and weakened by exposure, could not help him." McDermott, "23, battled side by side with his companions, Lieut. J. H. Rothrock and Lieut. W. S. Pocock, for five hours on the ice-covered wings of the plane before he died, the sixth to lose his life in connection with preparations for the army to fly the mail. Once, in the almost super-human struggle of the three to cut