Guerre di meraviglie

Parachute jumps are no novelty to Arthur H. Starnes. He's dropped 300 times. But dropping nearly six miles before pulling the ripcord is a rare event in any man’s life, Mr. Starnes included. He did that the other day, laden with 115 pounds of equipment and instruments that recorded pulse, respiration, altitude, time and other factors of interest to science. Picking a day when it was clear enough to spot the field below with a telescope, Starnes bailed out over a Chicago airport from an altitude of 30,800 feet. As he plummeted to earth, his heartbeats - normal except for a slight increase just before he leaped and again as the first 'chute opened - were broadcast by radio to a receiving set on the ground and recorded on a wax disk. A recording pneumograph showed that he took six deep breaths, eight shallow ones. His goggles frosted over as he plunged through a cloud, cleared at about 5,000 feet. The altimeter that would tell him when to open the parachute was strapped to his wrist. “I kept glancing at the altimeter,” he related afterward, “then at objects that passed about me. I had a firm grip on the rip cord. I watched the needle go by the 2,500-foot mark. I seemed to be falling face foremost once more, rocking and wobbling. I was very much alert. My mind was clear, my sight good. Then I started to spin again. I shot my legs out and spread them, glanced at the altimeter and pulled the rip cord as the needle passed the 1,500 foot elevation mark. I felt the pack burst open. There was a short lapse, then a terrific jerk. I looked up. The 28-foot chute was open.” An automatic stopwatch timed the free fall at 116% seconds. He had averaged 170 miles an hour, dropping from a level where the temperature was 46 degrees below zero and air pressure four pounds to the square inch, to a ground temperature of 60 degrees above zero and atmosphere of 14.7 pounds pressure. A barograph traced the story of the fall in altitudes and a motor-driven motion picture camera showed his gyrations in the air. His flying suit was electrically heated, and an oxygen bottle was connected to his helmet. There was a radio speaker in the helmet for talking to his ground crew. Mr. Starnes pointed out the military lesson of his fall, that a properly equipped aviator can drop from tremendous altitudes without losing consciousness or freezing, and that a free fall decreases the likelihood of the pilot being struck by his own falling plane or parts, or being shot by an enemy. Further, there is less danger of damage to the parachute, since the velocity of a free-falling object increases or decreases to a stable rate of about 120 miles an hour, while the speed of the plane at the moment of the leap might be 300 or 400 miles an hour.