BALLOONISTS' TERRIBLE FATE

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 654, 25 March 1914, Page 6

BALLOONISTS' TERRIBLE FATE

On December 29, 1910, the, balloon Hildebrandt, containing a lawyer named Kohrs, his friend, Hcrr Keidel, and an experienced aeronaut as pilot, ascended from a sma-1 suburb of Berlin, and was not heard of for nearly three weeks, when it was discovered in a lonely lake In the midst of the almost impenetrable* forests of the southern frontier of Pomerania.

It had been Kohrs's intention to sail with the prevailing wind blowing steadily to the north, and after covering a distance of a ->-t 300 miles, to return to Berlin. As nothing more was heard of them, it was generally accepted that the rn fortunate balloonists had pcvi:h'd in the North Sea or in the Pa'tic. Some men, however, oi't for iheir Sunday walk, detected a small round hammock on the sv.rfaco oi the lake, which was covered v.i h ice, and on approching ths object it was discovered to be a balloon.

Nothing could be don: th-.n ; but by the next day help arrived, and the surrounding ice and snow cleared away, it was fovn! io be the missing Hildebrandt. Sta-iair>." upright in the car was the ] ody of Kohrs, while leaning over tin side was the body of • his unfortunate companion.

It is generally believed that the balloonists descended on the Ja" c et night, thinking it to be a gra.~<3 clearing in the forest covered' villi snow, and that the impact of t'r.e car as it went through the ice was the first they knew of the'r danger. The darkness and the extreme cold frustrating every effort to csc.npe, iha unfortunate men must have been frozen to death.