THE FLIGHT OVER EVEREST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 113, 16 May 1933, Page 6

THE FLIGHT OVER EVEREST.

An issue of the "Times" received to-day contains editorial comment on the British flight over Everest. "Lord Clydesdale's story shows how the expedition was enabled to seize its moment among the shifting moods of the mountain. Not for nothing has Indian legend surrounded it with a sinister demonology. Xot for nothing— apart from every other manifestation of storm, mist and haze—do travellers and climbers remember the mane of snow streaming from its summit as one of the most familiar characteristics of the peak. A steady hurricane of over 100 miles an hour is among its- more faithful attendants. Yesterday, it is pleasant to record, it was an Indian observer who set the enterprise in motion ;bv reporting from the behaviour of the balloons that the wind, though hardly slumbering, hnd relaxed its vigilance and fallen to 57 miles an hour at mountain height. There was still a dust haze, and there were inevitably the risks and rigours of a temperature of the order of 70 degrees below zero. It was the pilots' task to navigate their machines in company to the summit, and then to manoeuvre them in such a, way as to give the cameras the best possible use of the precious minutes during the climax of the flight. While so engaged they would have to watch not only the usual instruments and controls of the cockpit, but also the elaborate series of specialised attachments necessitated by the great height, and in particular the vital supplies of oxygen find heat. It is small wonder that among this galaxy of gadgets they had spent days in training themselves to meet this or that contingency in the air by making the appropriate action as nearly as possible instinctive and unconscious. Fortunately, the Houston-Wcstland and West-land-Wallace machines with their Bristol Pegasus engines were again models of constancy in performance, but it says everything for the quality of the navigation that the pilots were able to provide for a 15 minutes' cruise at the β-nmmit, and much for the risks they braved that their margin over the peak was no more than 100 ft. The photographers, when their turn came, had to make sure that no fraction of the crowning opportunity given them by the pilots was wasted. This in its way was a responsibility equally calling for steadiness of nerve and quickness of judgment among the encumbrances of necessarily limited space and command, of special clothing and of the breathing apparatus, while at the speed of the machine and in the temperature of the atmosphere it would be impossible to leave shelter for mure than a second or two at a time."