FATAL BALLOON FLIGHT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 6 February 1928, Page 5

FATAL BALLOON FLIGHT

OXYGEN FAILS .THE PILOT

FAR ABOVE THE EARTH

ALTITUDE RECORD REGISTERED 1 HEIGHT QF 43,000 FEET ; ..,- Captain Hawthorne C. Gray, ah American army aeronaut, whose* bo'dy was found near Sparta, Tennessee, in the wreckage of a balloon, died at an altitude never before reached by man, cording to the evidence of barographs that were examined by army officers. His death was caused, apparently, by an accidental severing of the tube that, led from his helmet to an oxygen lank. Physicians who examined the body-be-lieve- that rarefied air and the intense cold —estimated at somewhere betweeh.,4o and 80deg. below zero—overcame him and he lost all control of his balloon, . Besides the barographs, which, indicated that Captain Gray reached a height of between 43,000 ft and 44,000 ft, there, was a log in the handwriting of the aeronaut himself, detailing with drama* lie brevity, tho events on his trip. Ther last entry, scrawled as though by an intense effort of will to overcome weakness and exposure, read: "40,000—last sand bag." At 39,000 ft. there was another entry: "Minus 28deg. Sky ordinarily blue. Sun is bright. All good." The diary had commenced when Captain Gray was only 10,500 ft above Scott field, Belleview, Illinois, whence he set out on his third grand attempt .to crash the world's altitude record on 4th November. At the beginning of his float-, ing journey that carried him higher and higher as he was swept southward over the rolling lands of Kentucky and' tho hills of Tennessee, he wrote in a firm, precise hand. The first notation was.on the temperature, 24 above.

SERIES OF BRIEF MESSAGES . At 2.40 p.m., five minutes later, Cap-' tain Gray wrote that he was at 12,000 it, and that he was dropping his extra hand rope. At 19,500 ft., reached at 3.05, he noted that the temperature was zero,' At 3.10 he heard a radio station, KMOX. His altitude then was 23,000 ft., it was snowing, he had donned his gloves and the temperature was 8 below. ~ ' Then came a rapid series of brief messages. "KMOX—Thinking of you." "WHO,' Des Moines, Sunset, by Qle Ole'son's orchestra." "3.13—24,000 ft., snow." "3.17—44 telling about dying, 29,000 ft. Minus 29deg. WLS, Chicago, Cliencide." "3.2l—Pied Piper, 30,000 ft, Ice. Sun clock frozen. Minus 35deg." Then, with, the cold of the' boundaries of terrestrial space beginning to close its grip upon him, the aviator..wrote a newseries of messages in his scrawling hand. If he had followed his announced inten-" tion he donned his oxvgeri mask" "at - 30,000 ft. " ■■-:--: "Thirty-two thousand—WFWY, ;/ at Hopkinsville, march, 33 below," was" the first. The next recorded the complete failure of his radio receiving apparatus: "Thirty-four thousand feet, CYL off antenna. No more music. Minus 40deg. Too much Agr. At 36,000 ft. a hopeful note: "Thirty-two degrees below. Getting warmer. Vacuum,, in mouth." ■ ...

FINAL NOTE AT 40,000 FEET . That was all, except the messages at .*9,oooft. and the final one at. 40,000 ft. The theory accepted by the coroner and' other investigators was that Captain Gray had cut. the oxygen tube as, in a frenzied effort to go even higher than his already record-breaking journey—provided the evidence of the instruments is accepted—he had tried with a knife to cut away some dispensable part of his balloon and that he had instead severed the air tube. The official record for altitude is 34,424 ft., and Captain Gray's indicated mark exceeds this bv more than- 9000 ft.

1 Captain Gray took oft from Scott, field, in an army bag of 80,000 cubic feet capacity, known as the SBO-241. Before leaving he underwent the usual physical' examination and was pronounced thoroughly fit. In his unofficial ascent some time ago to 42,470 ft., he was forced to return to earth in a parachute for..the last 6000 ft. This caused the record to be disallowed.

On Captain Gray's last try he wore a flying suit in which Lieutenant John A. Meßeady had broken the airplane height record in 1926 by reaching 38,704 ft. He was warmly wrapped and wore oiled goggles. The equipment was carefully inspected before his take-off.

AVIATOR'S BODY IN THE BASKET

For a time a fleet of five airplanes followed the aviator in the trip. !hi-y lost the aviator as he went higher and h-gher. Nothing more was heard of bun until a group of farmer boys came across the collapsed balloon, resting in the top of a tree, seven miles from Sparta. Captain Gray's body was in the basket. It had no marks to indicate that the crash had caused death.

The barographs and the diary were taken in charge by army officers and were sent to Washington for examination by Government experts. Captain Gray was 38 years old, married and the father of three sons.