THE MOST DARING AIR FEAT.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 56, 6 March 1916, Page 3

THE MOST DARING AIR FEAT.

DROPPING TE|N THOUSAND FEET IN A PARACHUTE. Undoubtedly the most daring aeronautical feat on record was that performed by Lieut. Col. E. M. Maitland, who commands the Airship Section of the Naval Air Service, and who recently jumped from a baloon flying oyer London at a height of 10,000 ft., descending by parachute. Hitherto, the record seems to have been held by that intrepid balloonist Captain Baldwin, who in 1887 claimed to have descended from a height of one mile (5,280 ft.) in Just over three minutes.

Colonel Maitland was fifteen minutes coming down and he confesses that the most trying part of the experience for him was before the parachute opened. He fell several hundred feet dead weight and the suspense “seemed like an eternity,” but at last the parachute opened, and the descent continued steadily. The feat was the result of a discussion which took place concerning a certain official project, A question arising as to whether a balloonist could make a safe descent from such a height. “Someone,” said Lieut.-Col. Maitland, “must make the experiment. I must know what will happen. I will take the jump myself, as there is only one person whom I have the right to ask.”

An extremely large parachute was used for the experiment, the descent safely accomplished, and thus the official querry was satisfactorily solved. The experiment also demonstrated tire fact that a parachute descent in no way interferes with the stability of an airship, so that a man could be landed after a long journey with reports while the airship continued its flight. This is by no means the first parachute descent which Colonel Maitland has made, for in October 1913, he made a descent from the airship Delta at a height of I,Booft. The airship on this occasion w'as traveling at twenty miles an hour, and the lieuten-ant-colonel fell 300 feet before the parachute opened but he landed safely in the Colne Reservoir at Aldershot.