At the age of 32, Lieutenant Elmer F. "Archie" Stone had already had an unusual career for a Coast Guard officer. Having completed flight training on 10 April 1917, he had the distinction of being Coast Guard Aviator Number 1 (and Naval Aviator Number 38) and had served in the armored cruiser USS Huntington during World War I when the Coast Guard had been subsumed by the Navy. So it was not surprising that in May 1919, Archie Stone was about to try something even more extraordinary.
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