07/31/2009. Remarks by Johan Visschedijk: "In 1920 the Manhattan hotel businessman Raymond Orteig offered $25,000 prize money for the first nonstop flight from New York, USA to Paris France. Captain Homer M. Berry of the US Army Air Service Reserve, with the help of New Hampshire paper magnate Robert Jackson, formed a company for that purpose, Argonauts, Inc., and the pilot would be the highly decorated French ace, Captain René Fonck (downed 75 aircraft during WW I).

Igor Sikorsky built the sole S-35 for the Atlantic challenge, initially designed as a four-seat sesquiplane of 76 ft 0 in (23.16 m) span and powered by two Liberty engines, on request of Fonck the aircraft became a three-engined (420 hp Gnome & Rhône Jupiter) sesquiplane with a span of 101 ft 0 in (30.78 m). It was first flown at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York, by Fonck and Sikorsky on August 23, 1926.

A month later, on September 26, during take off for the flight to Paris, the heavily overloaded aircraft crashed and burst into flames. Fonck and co-pilot USN Lieutenant Laurence Curtin escaped injuries, but radio operator Charles Clavier and flight mechanic Jacob Islamoff perished in the inferno."