BALLOON RECORD

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 27, 13 November 1935, Page 7

BALLOON RECORD

IN THE STRATOSPHERE.

HEIGHT OF 74;000 FEET.

• 1 AMERICANS’ EXCITING DESCENT.

(United Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, Nov. .11. A gentle landing late to-day by the world’s largest balloon in a field near White Lake (South Dakota), successfully ended a venture into the stratosphere to an altitude unofficially recorded as 14 miles. Captain Albert Stevefis and Captain Orvil Anderson, United States Army airmen, have won the world’s, altitude record if later calibrations sustain the barometric computations of 74,000 feet. The flight followed, six weeks of waiting for favourable weather. The altitude reached surpassed by 2000 feet the hitherto unequalled, hut never officially recognised, record claimed ror three Soviet airmen, whose venture last year ended in their deaths. The flight lasted eight hours 13 minutes. An anxious moment came a few minutes before landing, when the crew sent a wireless message from 23,000 feet up that the huge balloon and gondola, with an overall height equal to that of a 30storey building, was dropping at the rate of 500 feet, a minute.

For several frenzied moments the two airmen tossed out ballast and cheeked the downward rush 1000 feet from the ground. They threw out their scientific instruments attached to parachutes. During half an hour at the maximum height, sealed in a nihe-foot metal prison, the aviators made rapid scientific observations. ■■ Above and beyond stretched black infinity. The temperature outside the gondola was 63 degrees below zero, while inside it was 19 degrees above.

The aviators operated the spectrograph, stratoscope, and cosmic ray recorders, and took pictures, of the earth. The flight was sponsored by the National Geographical Society and the United States Army Corps.