Altoona Tribune/1940/Noted Pilot Dies in Plane Crash

Noted Pilot Dies in Plane Crash. New York City, New York; December 23, 1940 (Associated Press) Edward Schneider, 28, a flying instructor who had challenged death scores of times as a transcontinental speed record-breaker and as a flying soldier of fortune in the Spanish civil war, was killed today in a routine training flight with a pupil. Schneider and the student, George W. Herzog, 37, were drowned in an inlet of Jamaica Bay near Floyd Bennett Field when their plane went into a spin after a collision with a navy trainer above the field. Ensign Kenneth A. Kuehner, 25, of Minister, Ohio, pilot of the navy plane, landed with little damage. Neither Keuhner nor his passenger, Second Class Seaman Franklin Newcomer, 25, of Rochester, Ohio, was injured. Schneider, who learned to fly at 16, set a new junior speed record of 29 hours and 41 minutes from Westfield, New Jersey to Los Angeles in 1930. A week later he smashed two other records with eastward flights. He was one of four American "suicide pilots", leaders of the Yankee squadron, who fought for loyalist Spain in 1937. Herzog, who held a commercial pilot's license, was taking a C.A.B. "refresher" course. Eddie Schneider, as the junior member of a flying fraternity that was making history on the front pages of the nation's press by flying across continents and oceans a decade ago. was an over-night visitor in Altoona in 1931. Schneider was flying west, seeking still another junior Sight record and was forced to land at a local airport because of weather conditions. He was in the newsroom of the Tribune that night, checking weather reports so he could continue his flight the next morning. He is remembered as a quiet spoken, red-haired lad whose identity likely would not have been discovered had not a Tribune reporter observed the wings in his lapel, and asked his name.