PERIL IN THE MOUNTAINS

Taranaki Daily News, 20 July 1933, Page 5

PERIL IN THE MOUNTAINS

WORLD FLIER’S ESCAPES DENSE FOGS ENCOUNTERED HOURS OF BLIND FLYING POST PASSES IRKUTSK By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Rec. 12.30 a.m. Moscow, July 19. Wiley Post, the American round-the-world flyer, left Novosibirsh at 8.55 in the morning and later arrived at Irkutsk. He left Irkutsk at 7 a.m. He encountered bad weather in the Urals and was forced to rely on the automatic pilot while he steered by the instruments. Post is optimistic, considering that if he can maintain the gruelling pace he has an excellent chance of beating the record. In a further message Post states: "The flight over the Urals was worse than the last half of the Atlantic. I .experienced the densest cloud I have ever seen and rose to 21,000 feet vainly trying to get clear. I flew "blind” for seven hours. Once I almost scraped a hillside looming suddenly through the fog. I believe that if I had had a. parachute I would have jumped on two or three occasions when it seemed impossible to get through. "The feed pipe and the automatic pilot again became disconnected, but the invisible mountains were the real danger.”