Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1921-10-23

CEVEN and half miles up, The
y region of terrific winds. yet DO,
enough oxygen to keep nan alive
The realm of freezing cold. where the
me.cIlry slides down to 80 below, AZ
altitude SO great that the skin on the
body begins to swell, simply from lack
of air pressure.
To that tremendous height. bit
higher. even. scared Lieutenant John
A. Alacready Of the United States air
service. McCook Field. Dayton. o.,
ship of the world. Breaking all pre-
viol,s records. he winged a long. lone
air trail to level of 40.S00 feet more
than 10000 feet higher than the grim
crest of Mount Eve est. the top of the
world" and actually ~ niles above
the earth. /,
Human nerves and human brains
both triumphed in this instance. Two
inventions of science. the General Flee
trio Moss supercharger and the tald-
well high pitch propeller, accomplished
the unheard-of.
Means Nine Hours to Frisco
Macready record fl sht is believed
to assure high altitude, high speed air
transportation as practicable matter.
Air craft at that height can make 200
miles an hour, due to small air resist
ance and absence of storms. That Is
equivalent to 300 miles an hour on the
ground.
Therefore. the possibility is foreseen
by aviators of flying from New York
to Chicago in three hours. And from
New York to San Francisco in nine
hours.
The craft that carried Macready
new pioneer of the air. was the same
lie Pere biplane in which Major Ru-
dolph c. Schroeder achieved the for
mer altitude record of 3S.1SO feet a
year and a half ago. Major Schroeder
was quick to congratulate Lieutenant
Macready on having won the high flight
Grown OF icicles.'
Macready Lauds His Comrades"
Spinning down in great spirals from
out Of the heavens at the end of this
nerve -numbing exploit, Lieutenant Mac
ready calmly remarked that he hadn't
intended to break any records when he
left the ground.
II went up primarily to test new
propeller and additional equipment on
The supercharger.' he said. My rec
ord flight was test flight. and the
record was incidental to the very val
liable engineering. propeller and super
charger data which was Obtained
Then he spoke in high terms of both
supercharges, and propeller. He
praised their peprformance, the
smoothness of their work; saying moth
ing, however. about his own courage
and endurance They were his "com-
rades." these things of cold metal.
and he generously gave them the big
gest share of the credit.
Particularly did he mention the
efficiency of the supercharger. that ex-
traordinary apparatus designed by DIR.
Sanford Al. Moss. OF the General Elec-
tric company's laboratory at Lynn,
Mass.
lieutenant Macready declared that
mans own physical weakness, rather
than any mechanical limitation of man
made mechanism. is now the big prob
lem in high flying.
"Supercharges." he said. ARE now in
such a high state Of development that
they should be fairly consistent at ex-
tremely high attitudes in the future.
Yet, in my opinion, altitude records
will not be guaged by the supercharges
themselves but by the physical limlta-
t'ons of the pilots. To get much high,
er. greater provision for the men will
haye to be made. somehow or other, or
it will be impossible for pilot to sus-
tain the extreme hardship
Superharger Com presses Oxygen.
The General Electric sHpercharger,
which enabled Lieutenant Macready to /
out-fly all other men. is most ingeni- |
ously designed. 1t is a small apparatus I
which literally takes the scant supply I
Of oxygen from the rarefied atmosphere
and congresses 1t to sea-level density,
supplying it at this density to the car
buretors Of the airplane engine.
The supercharger does !. the same
thing for the engine that he oxygen /
TASKS do for the pilot-prevehts suffo-
cation. 1