Is There Sargasso of Skies?

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 160, 24 July 1937, Page 15

Is There Sargasso of Skies?

"VTO TBACE has been found of a nuiuber of aeroplanes which, in the past few months, have been reported misaing. It fieems that they have "vanished into thin air," saya a writer ia Beynolds. Is that phrase a mere figure of speecli, or a scientific stato. ment of fiact? Daring pilots who have diiappeared, courageous pioneers of the stratosphere who have been swallowed up by the shies are not with us to tell Ihe story. Are we to copclude, therefore, that there is a Sargasso of the airf The sea hu its Sargasso, a seemingly fantastlc uet of elosely-packed weed about which a dozen tales, apparently incredible, have been pioved correct again and again. Seafarera for centuries have believed that in its nnplnmbed depths are wholo armadas of Spanish hulks, their sides bursting with the stolen jewels of - Mexico and- the Indies, frigates whose decks ran with blood when the sknll and eross-bones flew from their mains, and a thousand other craft of all rigs aad eras. Scientists have tried to xidieule this theory. But they admit that strange happenings must'have occurred in the Sargasso. And while that mass of weed remains nnpenetrated they let the veil of mystery hang over it. . At the same time these men, who must have the tiniest details of thoir work proved and tabulated, are investigating another and still stranger sea — the stratosphere. Twelve miles above earth, the laws of Nature are turned inside out. Bags of sand, flung from gondolas by intrepid balloonists, have flown upwaids. Other invaders of the stratosphere have pulled the rip-cords of their baUoons r to find that, instead of deScendingj they go higher still. One January morning, in 1934, threo Bnssian scientists set off from Moscow to explore the stratosphere. Their gondola was of stainless steel with hermetically-sealed windows and their balloon was a gigantic globe of specially tested fabric of tremendous strength. Ordinary aeronauts register their altitndes in feet; when the .threo Bussians broadcast a report of their progress they gave it in their equivalent of our English. miles. Ten, eleven twelve miles they xose and still re. assuring messages came to their fellowscientists on the earth far beneath them. Twelve and a half miles was reported, and those listening knew that

soon their eomraaes should be desceniling. The balloonists had broken everv recoi'd. But after the last triumphuiit message came — silence. A hundred aeroplanes soured into the sky, a dozen airships floated cigar-like above the Hoviet, and everywhere on earth men started searching. Thoir quest was fruitless. One more message came from the sky. Two hundred miles from Moscow a radio operator picked up a faint signal: "Attention! Attention! Sirius speaking. StTatostat caught in zone of atmospberic precipitation. Gondola covered with ice. We are in a hopeless situation. We are falling, Two com. rades in bad condition. " And then silence once more, The three Eussian scientists had been destroyed by a Sargasso of the air. More recently we have the gallant "Smithy," Australia's pride, who disappeaTed somewhere over the Bay of Bengal. The official aceount of tho tragedy reads more like a fairy story than a staid, bureaucratic doeument. On November 6, Sir Charles KingsfordSmith and J. T. Pethybridge left Lympne on a flight to Australia and, after a halt at Athens, flew on to Allahabad. On November S they passed over Calcutta. Later they were seen over the Bay of Bengal. After that, not a trace was found of thom or their machine, though a squadron of the R.A.F. searched for days. Back again to pre-war times, there was the French airship La Patrie. Torn away from the ground by a strong wind. she was blown across the Channel, over Ireland and out across the Atlantic. This time there was nobody aboard, and it was an empty airship which vanished into space. Switch again, practically to the present day, and there is that gallant old airwoman the Duchess of Bedford who flew off one day, never to return.