FLYING AT 840 M.P.H.

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 37, 5 January 1945, Page 7

FLYING AT 840 M.P.H.

FROM AN ALTITUDE OF 28,000 FEET How docs it feel to travel at 810 miles an hour—faster so far as is than any other man has ever travelled and lived? Lieutenant. Robert H. Knapp, of Norwich, N-Y. ? who dived his P-17 at the fourte.en-mi 1 es-a-rninnte elip while chasing a group of enemy j lighters can't answer. | "I was too busy trying to regain | control of my plane" he explained recently at the. Army' Air Forces' Re- | distribution Station at. Atlantic City, N.Y. ''I, started my dive, at 28 000 feet. I didn't come out of it until the altimeter showed 5000 feet. "In between 1 was too busy to feel anything. At 20,000 feet I hit compressibility—that's when you start sliding through the air as if you were on ice. When .the speedometer showed I was travelling at 570 to 000 miles an hour (that's equal to 840 miles an hour when you allow for temperature, and pressure differences) I figured it was time to get out. I even went so far as to reach up for the canopy to push it up before hitting the "silk. "Lucky I didn't; at that speed I'd probably have, had my'back broken bailing out. Instead I kept working the tabs, and 'finally got the ship under control. She didn't zoom right up again or I'd have blacked out. Instead she 'mushed' up gradually; the only sensation I had was as if I were- making a sleep turn. I was. conscious all the time." Lieutenant Knapp's dive was so rapid that he was never touched by flak or enemy fighter bullets and he rejoined his leader to complete his. mission.