“By good luck, rather than because of any effort of mine, I came out of my third tail spin. I can’t recall going into the fourth—and last—spin, but I dimly remember bringing the ship to a flat spiral about a hundred feet from the ground. Then I struck a tree, and the machine went crashing to the ground. I was unconscious for five hours, but was warmly dressed, so that freezing was not added to my list of injuries. These, in fact, were slight; merely a few cuts and bruises. If I hadn’t carried snowshoes in the cockpit, however, I probably would have perished, then and there. We all carry snowshoes, emergency rations, and a rifle, now. And our machines are equipped with banking indicators to show when they are on an even keel.” At Reno, my next stop on the transcontinental Air Mail route, I learned of the untimely end, only a few weeks before, of Pilot Blanchfield. For ten years he had been a flier, first with the Royal Flying Corps during the war. Then he came to the United States, applied for citizenship, and entered the Air Mail Service. In those ten years he had flown approximately 300,000 miles, or more than twelve times around the earth. [Illustration: Ninety-six inspections before each flight!] In flying over the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, between Reno and Elko, Nevada, Blanchfield found the atmosphere in the neighborhood of the “hump” far more violent and dangerous than the disturbance in the air caused by anti-aircraft shells during the war. Besides experiencing several hazardous journeys under these conditions, during his comparatively brief career with the Air Mail, this pilot, on one occasion, was caught by a “twister” or tornado such as they have in Nebraska. But it was during an almost unheard of succession of gales, blizzards, and cold weather in November, 1922, that Blanchfield experienced what was perhaps his most exciting adventure. The thermometer was 60° below at Elko one day when he persuaded the field manager to permit him to carry the mail to Reno, 235 miles away. Blinding sheets of snow, carried on the wings of an eighty-mile gale, were driven against the hangar as Blanchfield gave the signal for his machine to be wheeled out into the open. Steering directly into the howling wind and snow, the pilot was completely hidden from view within half a minute. The shrieking winds soon drowned the steady roar of his motor. It is the custom, west of Cheyenne, for every railroad telegraph operator to report to the nearest Air Mail field the passage overhead of an airplane. Half an hour went by, yet no report came to either the Reno or Elko field. An hour passed, and still no tidings came. Meanwhile the storm had increased in intensity. A foot of snow had fallen.