FOURTEEN MILES UP.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 13 November 1935, Page 6

FOURTEEN MILES UP.

GIANT TLS,i BALLOON IN "ABOVE AND BEYOND STBETCHED BLACK INFINITY." (By Telegraph-Press Assn.-Copyright) Keceived Tuesday, 9.20 p.m. WHITE LAKE (South Dakota), Nov. 11. A gentle landing by the world's largest balloon in a field near here late to-day successfully ended a venture into the stratosphere to an unofficially recorded altitude of 14 miles. Captains Alberta Stevens and Orvil Anderson, United States Army fliers, if the later calibrations sustain the barometric computations of 74,000 feet, won the world's altitude record bringing to a climax a six week's wait for favourable weather and surpassing by 2000 feet the hitherto unequalled, but never officially recognised record claimed for the trio of Soviet airmen whose venture last year ended in their deaths. The venture lasted eight hours 13 minutes. ,An anxious moment came a few minutes before landing. The crew wirelessed from the 23,000 feet level that the huge balloon and gondola with an overall height equal to that of a 31-storey building was plummeting downward at the rate of 500 feet pel minute. For several frenzied moments the pair tossed out ballast and checked the downrush. A thousand feet from the earth they threw out the scientific instruments attached to parachutes. During the half-hour at the pinnacle of their ascent while sealed in a ninefoot metal prison, the aviators made rapid-fire scientific observations. Above and beyond stretched black infinity. The temperature outside the gondola was 68 degrees below zero, while inside it was 19 degrees above. The aviators operated a spectograph, a stratoscope and cosmic ray recorders and took pictures of the earth. The flight was sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the United States Army Air Corps.