Dramatic Moments.

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 92, 12 January 1935, Page 13

Dramatic Moments.

HE FELL SIX MILES This is the story of three minutes in the life of Major Schroeder, and of something he did at Dayton in Ohio, in February, 1920. His idea was to reach the greatest height ever attained. It took him over half an hour in his aeroplane to climb through the sky to over 30,000 feet. He went up and up and up till he was lost sight of, and the very blue wrapped him round. He left the ground in warm sunshine, he approached Arctic temperatures in twenty minutes!. His goggles were dimmed over with ice long before the temperature sank down (as he went up) to 50 degrees of frost. He was breathing exygen from an apparatus on his back. He kept the machine under perfect control. He remembeied reading, off 31,000 feet—six miles, a dizzy , height, higher than any living man had ever reached at that time, and then The'oxygen supply failed. His mind • clouded. He fell. Down he plunged. The terrific speed ripped the covering from the wings of his machine. Three empty petrol tanks were crushed flat by the enormous strain. His plane lurched, spun round, roared to earth. In something over two minutes he travelled nearly six miles. When he was ten seconds from the ground and sudden death he recovered, pulled the control, and made a perfect landing.