The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-10-14
TRAGIC COLLAPSE
 OF BALLOON 5000
 FEET IN TIE AIR
Homer Honeywell Recalls Experiences of Noted Aero nautS - BaIIooning
 Safest of Sports

Aeronauts are emphatic that ballooning is the safest of all sports.
 The night before the nation al balloon race held here, Homer Honeywell, the civilian winner, assured a party of friends with whom he was chatting in the Tutwiler that after a score years experience, he would rather make. the Birmingham-Canada trip by balloon than by automobile.
 Never in the history of Ameri gan aeronautics has there been fatality l in a free balloon" he said. Yet the thrilling experience of Messrs. Hawley 1 and Post-the former with Major Lam | bert, represented the Aero Club of l America at the start of the race here 1 on September 25-when they were lost in the forests of northern Quebec, l where they descended at the finish of  from St. Louis in. l9e7, and the still more thrilling experience of A. Holland Forbes and MT. Post, when the balloon "ConQueror," one of the American en- tries, collapsed with them 5000 feet in the air at the start of the Gordon Bennett race from Berlin in 1908, are still pointed to by the timorous as proof that aerial travel, even in free balloons of modern design and man. tI 1- The following account of the Berlin accident is from an article in the Cen tury written by MT. Post himself;
 LET GO, ALL" The moment of departure had ar- rived; the officer commanded, Let Go, All, The men released their hold and Mir. Forbes threw out a little sand. Curiously enough, there was differ cnce of fifty feet in the elevation of the starting place and that where we had been balanced, and even this slight difference brought about a little heavi- ness in the start of several balloons.
 We were gently rising. when a puff of wind caught us and whisked us to- ward q board fence against which the crowd was packed. For that matter, the crowd was packed everywhere, but this part of it had to scatter; the car tore through the fence as if it had been made of paper and then, swaying from the force of the shock, began to swing like giant pendulum far out on either side.
 "Two bags of sand were knocked
 off, another split open, and the sudden loss of weight sent the bal
 loon shooting up into the air high
 above the crowded tribunes, the
 field covered with vehicles of
 every sort, high over the streets
 md roofs black with gazers.. and
 the farms that now stretched out
 under our view fur on every side.
 We got out the guide rope and ad-
 justed the instruments and settled
 ourselves for a long voyage.
 From far below came a faint mur- mur; all that we could hear at this great height of the roars of applause going up from the assem bled million; far away in the distance we could see the balloons that had preceded us eight of them, stretching in & long line like buoys at the entrance of a harbor. They drifted slowly. the far thest just disappearing in the haze over the horizon.
 5000 FEET HIGH
 Forbes was busily engaged in pilot ing the balloon, his eye on the stato- scope, that showed us at a height of = ] entered the barometer reading in my log book and watched the neck of the balloon swell and become distended as the gas expanded under the decreased pressure at such height and from the heat of the sup.
 Forbes said How nicely it worksr The expansion had come so quickly that the appendix was fully open and swelled by the gas that rushed out xxrif ily~ steam boiler My pencil was on the log-book when felt a distinct trem ple of the basket, such as we sometimes feel when a wrinkle straightens cut of the balloon envelope.
 T looked up. The bottom of the balloon was beginning to shrivel like an old dry apple. I said to Forbes: She's gone and reached up just in time to slip the end of the appendix rope through the knot So it could rise into the top of the balloon, which hen could form a parachute. Meanwhile the gas had escaped from the huge rent in the side, through which we could see the blue sky.
 Tt Is not pleasant to think what
 would have happened had not one
 of us caught and released the ap-
 pendix rope that was intended to
 prevent exactly what was our sal-
 Nauon-the forming Of para
 chute. One second more, and 1t
 would have been as tnut as an iron
 rod; in the time that 1t would
 have taken to cut it. we should
 have been the ground with even
 the knife blade shattered to pieces.
 For the Conqueror would have
 come down like n stone with n rag
 tied to it.
 TERRIFIC ASCENT
 As it was. the first speed of deseen was terrific. Forbes took out his biz knife that ho carried in a sheath at hi' waist and sashed the bags of sand tha hung at the corners of the basket, an, they dropped like apples from tre' roughly shaken. The fast thing bal loonist does is to drop a bag whole an I remember asking Forbes about it. an. his replying that everyone was lookin; at us and had, plenty of chances |, dodge.
 'We were going down so fast that VI passed some of the bags on the, way but these were the empty ones thar had shaken over the side, making suel sandcloud that we seemed to be pass ing through a simeon in the desert. Tn, empty bags made little parachutes c themselves. going down more and nor
 For the rush of the fall had sent tn cloth of the lower part Of the balloon up into the top with snap: there it wa held by the netting, though the strat' stretched the stout cords to their utmost