The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-09-01
DIES IN MD AIR.
AerOnaut Baldwin Blown to
Fragments by Dynamite
While l 800 Feet Above Ground
in Airship.
WAS SEEN BY $4,000.
Was Giving Exhibitions at In
diana Fair.
Catastrophe Witnessed by His
Wife and Children.
WAS SEEN BY $4,000.

Greenvil1e, o., Sept John r.
Baldwin, an aeronaut of Spanish
American war fame, was killed bv the
explosion of six sticks of dynamite in
his balloon while 1,500 feet in the air.
His wife and two children were in the
crowd OF $4,000 persons which saw the
accident. Baldwin was giving daily ex-
hibitions at the fair. He would ascend
several thousand feet in the air and
explode half a dozen sticks of dyna-
mite at different times. He had mount
ed 1,5OO feet in the air and his balloon
was soaring as gracefully as a bird.
While the thrilled crowd with heads
uplifted were watching there appeared
in the sky, where the balloon had been,
great cloud of smoke. Seconds later
there came down a great boom from
the clouds. The smoke obscured the
view, but those who could continue the
watch saw fragments of the balloon
falling Baldwin had been blown to
bits by the explosion. His body was
picked up and removed to a morgue.
Baldwins wife screamed when she
saw the smoke, long before the explo-
sion, for her practiced eye told her of
the tragedy which had occurred in the
clouds. She fell in a dead faint before
the vast crowd had realized what was
happening.
No one can tell how the accident oc-
CURED. The six sticks of dynamite ex-
plOded simultaneously, as only one re-
port was heard. Baldwin carried with him
sufficient dynamite to have blown him
self and his balloon into atoms. Mems
faces blanched and women tainted as
the parts of the balloon and aeronaut's
body fell. Baldwin was from Losanti-
vile, Ind. and was Sc years old. He
had been engaged for a long while in
giving balloon and airship exhibitions at
county fairs.
Was an Old BaIIoonist.
John E. Baldwin was in the service OF
the government as a. balloonist in the
Spanish-American war. In the opera
tionS in Cuba the army used two bal
looms to make observation of the Santi-
ago Notifications. Baldwin was in
charge of one of them and De Ives, an
other aeronaut of the other The war
balloons were attached by light, insula-
ted cables to small trucks on the
ground and equipped with telephones
The De Ives balloon got in range of the
enemy and was shot full of holes. One
hundred and fifty-three bullets went
through the bag. Nine plowed their way
into the car and three knocked the dust
out of the commanding officers coat.
The balloon descended without injury
to the occupants.
The shooting of bombs as feature
of balloon ascensions was Ba1dwin's
own idea Each bomb was lowered
about $50 or 300 feet on a separate cord.
The bombs were fired by fuses, touch
ed off before they left the basket In
Macon, Mo-, in June of last year Bald
win told of a narrow escape he once
had in these words:
"One Fourth of July I was making an
ascension at Connersville, Ind. I let out
the first bomb. 1t went down for II or
16 feet and the reel got hung up. The
fuse was sizzing and the catastrophe
terribly close. I was then a mile and a
quarter high, and had shells containing
so pounds of dynamite right in front
of me Z didn't have a pocket knife to
cut the cord, and to break it with my
hands was impossible. If that shell had
gone off there, there wouldn't have been
enough of me left for funeral. It had
seriously entered my head to jump, be-
cause l thought that the better of the
two deaths Then I thought of pulling
the bomb back. I did it in jiffy, ex-
pecting every second to be the last
grabbed the thing in my hands and
hurled it down with such force 1T broke
the cord and 1 was safe. It exploded,
it looked like, in a second or two after
it left my hands. but far enough down
to remove the danger"
Baldwin made his first ascension in
Dalton. Ind. when he was 20 years old.
He spent nearly $40, 900 and many years
trying to perfect an airship that would
sail against the wind. He considered
that the problem now blocking all ef-
forts at aerial navigation is to get
motor of sufficient strength to go
against the wind and yet not be too
heavy for the gas reservoir. At one
time Baldwin experimental extensively
with bombs in an effort to produce rain.