MAN’S CONQUEST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1941, Page 7

MAN’S CONQUEST

HIGHER THAN BIRD FLIGHT.

Flying at. an altitude of 36,000 feet over Brest the American-built FlyingFortresses were masters of a region to which the birds, in all the millions of years they have been flying, have never been able to attain. New interloper though he is in cloudland, man has, with his ingenious machines, beaten the feathered pioneers not only in speed of flight, but in heights reached. By the time the aviator reaches a height of 25,000 feet,'he is in a region where no other form of life has ever penetrated, though on the ground such a distance would represent but a few minptes drive in a car —less than five miles. At that height, such insects that might have been clinging to the outside of the machine have long since fallen insensible, though they were aviators millions of years before even the birds took to the air. Even the mighty condor, to whom most naturalists give the palm for high soaring, has given- up the unequal contest of flesh and blood against the machine, its upward limit being somewhere about 23,000 feet. To cross the Andes, these mighty birds, according to Humboldt, follow the passes, in the highest of which they fly close ove-' travellers’ heads.