The evening world. Newspaper, July 7, 1922, Page 16

| | oon i ERG BE CS Swift Air Current Rushing From Y’est to East 30,000 Feet Above Earth’s Sur- _ face Would Sweep Air- OW would you like to hop off in an airplane from San Francisco just after your coffee and toast some morn- ing and eat dinner on a roof garden in New York that evening? Sounds like an aerial fantasy, the dream of @ speed maniac, but it can be done. Pioneers of the air tell you so, One of them is Major R. W. Schroeder, who once climbed to the dim and dizzy height of 38,180 feet, seven and one-fourth miles, in an airplane—the hignest mortal man had ever ascended at that time—and then, unconscious and with his eyeballs frozen, shot downward like a meteor for seven miles be- fore he regained consciousness, safely. righted his machine and landed But how can this record-breaking transcontinental hop be ac- complished? DLasy—just go up high enough. And, it your plane could keep going continuously, you could then even make an aerial tour around the world in something like sixty-seven hours—a little less than three days. Far above the earth, seven or eight miles or so, is a wind travelling at a velocity so great that the instruments of science haye never been able to accurately gauge it. It is called the anti-trade wind and it circles the globe ceaselessly. A plane headed eastward which drifted into it would be carried along at such a tremendous speed that a coast-to-coast jump would be a simple day's task. There is another freak which this wind would perform. It has such great speed that if a plane were to take off at New York, rise into ite channel, fly for sev- eral hours in a westerly direc- but somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean! The wind velocity would be so great that a ship, even though it were travel- ling normally at a rate of one hundred or #0 files an hour, would be carried backward at an ‘even greater speed. ‘This little 1 insight into the myste- fies of the air ts but one of the pur sting and dangerous factors that con- in his efforts to conquer ‘There are many oth- as interesting, explained & writer on the Kansas Sunday Star by Major Schroeder. Draw up your chair alongside the desk Laboratories ii im the Underwriters’ esca} but i E UEGE REEECE {yore PER iii lW He ren Fi. gtgt ape tele CHL af fi them. He the strange mysteries and fantastic tricks of the air, pes, of thrills that many times in the fe of an intrepid explorer of the aj lit i & i g i 5 & great deal to do with altitua’ fy- ing. At the equator there are thou- sands of square miles of very dry, heated air, This expands and goes to great altitudes, where it overflows to- ward both poles. Reaching the poles it descends back to earth and returns to the equator, but ag it travels to- ward the poles it naturally still is rotating with the earth, perhaps not quite as fast as 1,047 miles an hour, but faster than any one has been able to gauge, and a great deal faster surface, due to the “It ts above 25,000 feet that thes enormous anti-trade winds are reached, A plane fighting them at an ordinary speed of 100 miles an hour will be carried backward at a rate twice that of its speed forward. For instance, tho first time I encountered them at an altitude of around 30,000 2 ‘ yj M4 How the Anti-Trade Winds Are Formed. — = = _ THE EVENING WORLD, FRIDAY, JULY 7, 1922, per CF 2 — wt yea? eae feet was at McCook Field in Dayton, O., during the war. For an hour and a half while on an altitude flight 1 flew a dead westerly course, .expect- ing to land about 150 miles west of Dayton. I came down to find that I was 200 miles east of that place. The enormous wind had carried me 360 miles from where I expected to d ascend. You see what would happen if you ascended high enough, flew with the wind and started around the world, It was in February, 1920, that the major soared to his record distance. ~ It was then that fortune smiled upon him and left him alive to tell the tale of an experience never before nor since encountered by man. With, his eyeballs frozen from the fierce cold at the 38,180 foot level to which he climb- ed, and while senseless in his machine from the lack of oxygen. and the in- haling of large quantities of carbon monoxide gas (similar to that which you get when you let your motor car run in the garage with the door shut), he tumbled like a rock for thirty-six WY \ NS \ < WY \ - Fr. — er" % 29,005r in WORLD a EVEREST. ASIA - FLYING. UME _& HOURS TRAIN TIME 12 2 HOURS 6 “. : LS Day owe x OL wee ge mE QPEL ae aw > ~f4 s: CASS Major Schroeder’s Airplane Climbing Above McCook Field in Record Flight on Which He Encountered Anti-Trade Wind. Flight and Tells How to Harness It. ® thousand feet—nearly seven miles— before regaining semi-consciousness. Still virtually blinded, he managed to tight the rampaging machine and glide to McCook field, where, within ten feet of the ground, he again lapsed into unconsciousness, but managed to land safely. For this trip he wore an electrically veated uniform and gloves and special anti-freeze goggles, and carried two oxygen outfits, one of an automatic ndture and the other a large bottle with a rubber hose attached. “At about thirty-four thousand feet {encountered one of the wind- whipped snowstorms which infest that region,’ says the Major. “At the edge of this I ran into the lowest temperature—67 below zero Fahren= heit Just above this snowstorm [ encountered a little rough air, but I went out into smooth air and got a 2-degree rise on the thermometer— and that was the first time a human being had ever got into the strato- sphere. It meant that I was in the tropical airs flowing to the North Pole. All of the time I wes drifting rapidly tq the east, despite the fact that I was headed west “When I got close to thirty-six thousand feet the cockpit began fill- ing with a gray steam. I let the machine go on up, but the oil-like smoke bothered me very much, I didn't know it then, but it was the carbon monoxide gas. It seemed to daze me at times. All the while I was ‘smoking’ on my bottle of oxygen. The only way I could keep consciousness way to smoke away for dear life on that tube. The gray steam began depositing moisture on the wings and wires, which froze until there was a coat of ice an inch thick over the centre part of the ship. “The only way I could get fresh air was to lean far over the left side of the machine and smoke away on the oxygen until I became so exhil- srated I had to quit I figured out that if I kept climbing and drifting at the rate I was going I would come down in New York or Penni with the hour and a half of left, but my supply of oxygen was dwindling. I made up my mind that if my supply In the ‘pipe’ ran out I would dive to 20,000 feet. I also realized that I would be sitting pretty if I could connect the rubber tube to the supply of oxygen in the automatic regulator, as then I would be good for another hour. There was a brass tube running to the regulator and I decided to break that and attach the rubber. “YT tried | to look down, but I couldn't see the tubing. I didn't dare take off my gloves to feel for it, be- cause my hand probably would have frozen instantly. I felt around for the tubing with my heavy glove on. In the meantime the oxygen was getting so weak that I knew I had to hurry. I realized the only thing to do was to pull down the goggles and take a peek to see where the tube was, break It off quickly and place the rubber hose on it, “Naturally I acted as speedily as 1 could, I reached for my goggles, pulled thew off—and my eyehalle froze almost instantly, It felt like hot water had been dashed into them couldn't realize, of course, what had happened so quickly I reached up quickly to feel of my eyes to find out why I had suddenly gone blind and as I did so I knocked the oxygen tube out of my mouth and it fell to the floor. “Then I was in for it, Thirty-eight thousand and some feet up, eyes frozen, no oxygen and nothing to In- + Major Schroeder, Who En- é countered This Wind on 38,180 Ft. Record Altitude bale but deadly gas! Fell 7 Miles, I knew that f had to do one thing. T was to get down in a hurry by diving, Lad. | pushed the ship into a dive and reached for the switches to shut off the engine. As [ did so my hand dropped to my side and I fell forward I was just barely able to realize some thing had happened—t couldn't exact ly figure out just what then. L didn’t know how far [ fell or how fast or how long I was unconscious, but | suddenly remember __ instinctively reaching for the controls and straighting out the machine. It was some minutes before I realized I was in the air, and then I was still very hazy. F knew my eyes were wide , but [ could see nothing. 1 took my gloves, held my warm hands over them and worked the lids down gradually. In perhaps fifteen or twon ty seconds I was able to see a bit & daylight. But my eyes wouldn't stay focused. ‘There would be flashes of light and then darkness. I kept them = [/ closed to rest them, taking a peek every minute or so. y “By these peeks [ discovered that I was lost. Finally, however, after , 9s twenty minutes or a half hour I recognized familiar ground be-, low me and heagled for McCook field. which was perhaps fifty miles away I kept my eyes closed a greater part of that distance for the last long ef- fort of putting the machine on the ground, I knew that if my eyes didn't improve I would have to get off in parachute and let the ma- chine go. I finally opened my eyes and discovered I was just above Mc- Cook field. I sent the ship into a spiral as hard as she would go. I kept my eyes shut until I was about three hundred feet from the ground. I then straightened out and was about ten feet from the ground before everything went black again, My eyes failed, 1 brought the controle back gradually and as the wheels touched the ground I collapsed probably due to the strain I was under, The boys at the field pulled me out and it was several weeks before I fully recovered. In addition to my eyes, the physicians said my heart had expanded under the high altitude to more than twice its nat ural size. “The instruments gave a record of © the flight, part of which I could not remember. ‘The time consumed in the 36,000-foot fall was two minutes and eleven seconds and the greatest speed attained in the drop was 375 miles per hour—between 80,000 and 20,000 feet The power, you know, was on all the way down. Two gasoline tanks, | learned later, had collapsed under the(| external pressure."* And that's the faller’s story of the world’s greatest fall However, it may not be his last because he is not yet through venturing far into the do main of the birds, Some day he wants to take that 8-hour jump from San Francisco to New York, He won't be satisfied until he does it. “L had planned a non-stop flight in a supercharged machine with two en gines from San Francisco to New York, flying with the anti-trade winds,’’ he said. “The machine was to be supercharged with air-tight cabin and this was to be supercharge also, a8 were the engines, With th: sort of a cabin and engines it would not be necessary to take heavy flying equipment or oxygen apparatus, At about 30,000 or 35,000 feet one ought to make about 800 miles an hour tn the wind, requiring about elght hours in the air, Some day, when we be come more famillar with supercharged engines, I intend to make the trip." 4 of