A WONDERFUL GLIDE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 11 September 1937, Page 13

A WONDERFUL GLIDE

an amazing flight There have been many amazing flights by glider pilots, but none more wonderful than that undertaken by a

German instructor who covered 215 miles in f> hours and 1)0 minutes, tia\el- j ling at an average speed of 35 miles an ; hour without any motive power wliati ever. • The glider was hitched on behind an aeroplane, and Erwin Kraft took oil’ a quarter of an hour before mid-day. At a height of (KiO feet lie let go the low j rope and. using a thermal (a rising | column of air) soon climbed to 3,300 j feet. Then he set oil on his proper : course for Cologne at a speed ol just I over 00 miles an hour. Imagine an engineless aeroplanes rushing across the sky at the speed of an express j train! ; Ten minutes later, Krall reached ; I 7,200 feet and entered a cloud in which \ |he had to "fly blind” for some time, | | then he emerged again and found him- 1 | self a thousand feel higher. To do; Uiis he had been lowed to use a > strong upward current of air—a current that most glider pilots would have “slipped” o(f because it was too dangerous. Then he took three-quarters of an ; hour to go 13 miles and did not travel more than 44 miles in two hours, j Speed afterwards increased, and he i finally landed at the Cologne Aerodrome at ten minutes to six, after a record-breaking (light. You mustn’t assume that the young German had a pleasant trip all the way. At one time it was very bumpy and on nearing Cologne he came down to a dangerously low altitude. Over . Cologne itself he cleared the housetops by only six feet and, in bis own | words: “I thought I was about to break myself and my sail-plane as well as the record! ” Fortunately, he succeeded on in breaking the record by a wide margin.