FOURTEEN MILES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 266, 13 November 1935, Page 9

FOURTEEN MILES

INTO STRATOSPHERE A RECORD ASCENT WORLD'S LARGEST BALLOON (by Telegraph—Prees A’sociajion—Copyright] Received Nov. 12, 9.50 p.m. WHITE LAKE (S. Dakota;, Nov. 11. A gentle landing by the world’s largest ballooirin a held near here late to-day successfully ended a venture into the stratosphere tc the unofficially recorded altitude of 14 miles. Captains Alberta Stevens and Orvil Anderson United States Army flyers, if later calibrations sustain the baro metric computations of 74,001 feet, Avon the world’s altitude record, bringing to a climax six weeks’ wait for favourable weather and surpassing by 2000 feet the hitherto unequalled but never officially recognised record claimed for a trio of Soviet airmen, whose venture last year fended in their deaths. The venture lasted 8 hours 15 minutes. An anxious moment came a few minutes before the landing. The crew wirelessed from the 23,000-feet level that the huge balloon and gondola, cvith an over-all height equal to that of a 31-storey building, was plummeting downward at the rate of 500 feet a minute. For several frenzied moments the pair tossed out balls and checked the down rush a thousand feet from the earth. They threw out scientific instruments attached to parachutes. During half an hour at the pinnicle of their ascent, sealed in the nine-foot metal prison, the aviators made rapid-fire scientific observations. Above and beyond stretched a black infinity. The temperature outside the gondola was G 8 degrees below zero, while inside it was 19 degrees above. The aviators operated spectograph, stratoscope and cosmic ray recorders, and took pictures of the earth. The flight Yvas sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the United States Army Air Corps.