A
Page
THE CHINA MAIL, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1955.
Not Science Fiction, But Challenging Fact:
NEW EVEREST ADVENTURE
Edwards Air Force Base out it the space flyers
in the Mojave Desert. would be greatly handi- THEY PUNCH HOLES IN THE SKY!
-ERE in the Mojave capped.
H
Desert men are in-
vading the laat
The officers and men frontier. The pound claim Muroe is the most ad- barrier has been shattered, vaneed test centre in the
but the heat barrier, {" thermal barrier. 100,000ft. above the earth, is a thicket which is yielding grudging ly to the thrusts of the supersonic jet and rocket planes.
No other British contes.
pondent has visited this
work. Certainly it is the carefully guarded, most restricted, and remote in the United States.
est
aid
the
AILAD,
THE LAST FRONTIER IS YIELDING TO
COLONEL 'PETE' AND HIS FELLOW PILOTS
the great mountain WAK named.
to
1 catre here specifically ree Colonel Everest, flying from New York and driving 100 miles through the desert from Beverly Mills.
The precautions are much
Sir George climbed high, but more stringent than those this young American, 36 years which shelter the head- old, 5ft 7in. tal), has soured talking to quarters of I have been
Strategic three times as high as Everest's Command which I 29,14141. have the men who
pene. Air trated the lonely upper sky visited a few montha
FIT these die- and have bee.. inspecting and copies their strange dart-nosed patches have been forward- Baltimore and needle-shaped machines
Washington in case I give sund comfort t the enemy.” unique fest base known to airmen as Morge, after the
This is
basse the
from desert dry lake, which is its which men "punch holes in ut it has 11 heart. In the words of the the sky." commanding general, J. S. special append to the Brilish Holtoner, the lake as: because chief of the flight- "Sixty-ve miles of dead. test operations division, the level. rock-hard landing No. 1 test pilot, is Lieut.- Colonel Frank Everest, # 19]. The
God's direct descendant of Sir dry gift to the base, and with George Everest, after whom
luke in
TAIKOO
" Pant
SUGAR
For good
cakes and good cooks...
Taikoo now introduce
BARBADOS sugar..
the secret of really good. rich, dark fruit cake. Try a 2 ib carton and see what
a difference it makes to your cakes.
TAIKOO
BARBADOS
SUGAR
IN ALL SHOPS & STORES
Rehned since 1884
M
26th February-8th March 1956
LEIPZIG FAIR
WITH TECHNICAL FAIR
55 Trade Groups covering 265.000 square metres
exhibition
of
space
In 15 Fair buildings. 19 Fair halls and 15 pavilion.
For further information apply to:
LEIPZIGER MESSEAMT POSTFACH 329
A
Order your copy
now-
Despite ekarunce from the Pentagon and backing from the British Embassy, I was ques- toned by Alr police at the mate Kate and directed to the credden- Stale hut.
More relaxed
THERE was
none of this at S.A. In the hut I RAW a sign, "For fraud or false stule, metus, $10,000 fine or five years to gaol I made no fare state- mments and was told I would be escorted by Lieut.-Colones Lloyd Garland.
Garland appeared after about ten minutes. Flo a, soft- spoken Southerner.
en- an Unsast and booster for Muroc.
He asked what I wanted to de liest, and I sfid: "See Colonel Everest," Garland said: Colonel's getting internationally famou I'm not so sure he likes 10 We drove over the rough ronds to Everest's office--a thist line of shacks,
Garland said: "We are moving out of these huls into real quar- Ler soon."
Over the entrance were
The
words: "Through these purtaly pass the oldest and boldest pilots in the world.”
The place was cluttered with
"Pete" Everest, chester, pointor in hand before a chart, was demonstraling something in other to a group of technicitis. and pilots.
He
young, more
locked very like a pupil than a teacher. He I good-looking. very bronzed, strong-chinned. und hus the eyes of an Airman,
He came out and said: thd -CHT) You come Inter
Colonel Garland said: bas o lat on his mind.”
J
DON
IDDON'S
DIARY
He snapped out
an order to gel Los Angeles on the phone und said: "Go ahead, shoot,"
I went into the talk slowly and pointed out he was probably the fastest man in the world and the world, therefore, wanted a close-up.
Everest In a cigarette and be-
don't fre gan to speak. "No,
scared up there. I never get claustrophobla, and I never get air sick.
121
"You know
how the thing's Flame
In the mother I go up ship and the Bell is attached to the belly.
"I get into the cockpit of the rocket ship after a bit and they drop me at about 30,000. Then 1 climb and let her go."
"How fast." I asked,
'Damned hot'
EVEREST ald: "I can't give
you exact figures. Pretty fast. It's not speed that is the probkm, I can see us doing 3,000 miles an hour, not yet, of course, if the aircraft stand up.
"The heat barrler, or therm- al barrier, is a mismOMET my opinion, although caudit on.
It bas
"Certainly it's damned kot, though we have cooling systems, plot is mot but the
347 much worried about melting himself as the plane melting.
What do I think of? Well, Po busy flying the thing "I'm and making notes and watch- backing the Instruments don't let my mind wander. It would be 100 bad if I did.
"He
I went back later after tour- ing she base und found Everet more relaxed. He sal al his desk in his "private office"-- another officer and a secretary share the
is ke Loon, which
an undergraduate's, with car- toons, calendars, nolices,
photographs of atroplanen.
сла
harder to Onco
"These rockets are fly than ordinary planes, we've done our spurt and it lasts only five or six minutes- we are on our own and have to Kiide to landing
11 Pawer."
without
When Evercat says "we" be means "1." There is only room for one man in the tiny, cramp- ed craft.
"I feel all right before, dur- LEL, Red after. I don't worry. I sleep well. It's flying, futuris Lle fylnst. but still flying. I'm not a fancy talker.
'Special' sort
WHAT about my wife? She
pucks
lunch my Test pilots' day.
wives we special sort. They have to be. I don't think they worry over- much, [Everest has three young children, and the family live on the base. 1
I
Everest and I chatted. I asked Everest what had been his most frightening experience.
He said: "Well, it's hard 10 say. I think when i was nying the (he mumbled some letters which meant nothing to me) caught Are at 20,000ft. worried the Are would burn through the controls. I got
I
1
was
down all right, but it was pretty tough. I wasn't burned as the fire was in the back."
At Edwarda Air Base a pilot waits in his high- altitudo emergency suit.
Ors! Bell
one who knows me knows that would look phoney. We will jus! pose against the plane."
Everest every
made the flight ITS powered
the X the other day. He is the only man alive to have flown the XII. He was dropped loosu from a mother plane and flew under rocket Dower for six minutes. The total flight, laclud- ing the gilde return, lasted 30 minutes. Six minutes to fly close without special glass shields the to 100,000rt, high, to invade the pilot would die. last territory! He said: "It was purely exploratory."
"We expert to zet the Bell really cooking In ittle while, and then we will get data that's overdue-stuff the manu-
facturers need."
Later I learned that on vir- lous nights in experimental planes Everest has had his engine ex- ploded in mid-air and crash- landed on fire; that one jet blew take-off, but he up during a
escaped unhurt; UNIL twice rockets have exploded or caught on fire while he's been testing planes, and that once testing the Bell the canopy over the cock- on alutude of pit cracked at 03,000ft. (human blood boils at 50,000) releasing the air from I said: "In Hollywood," and the pressurised cabin, and only, to Everest's special pressure-auft
saved him.
Everest suddenly turned to me and said: "Where did you Rel your carnation?"
Everest winked and began
talk again,
"I haven't
hobbies--- many hunting and fishing. And flying --that's my real hobby.
and
"We have a bit of social life
at Edwards-dances here the mess,
"I hope to go England, may- tie in January, and ny some of the R.A.F. planes."
We
I said:
think
need mare money allocated by the Government."
Everest said: "No politics. Come on. I'll show you around."
We went out where the planes were lined up the big mother ships and the rocket and jet planes. The base was noisy as the planes sent out cones of destructive sound. My eardrums ached,
the
Sell I wasn't The special there, but I had caught a Elmpse of it carlier in one of armed hangars until na company guard-there are 24 aircraft manufacturers_hero well as the thece Services- shooed Colonel Garland and myself away.
'Mine Is Not A Respectable Profession..
As
This Everest did not mention and he did not mention his 84 combat missions in Europe his 87 missjons in the Far East
to me.
or
We got along well and a base photographer asked us to pose for a picture.
Everest wanted me to climb into the cockpit of one of his rocket ships while he talked to me from a steel ladder against the plune, but I said: "Any
Secret metals
The rocket ship is built of many melnis, The frail-looking wings üre of heat-resistant stainless steel, the body of YOU should understand that nickel-bassi alloy, containing this base is a vast laboratory couper, manganese, aluminium, and the planes are not proto- and silicon. Also secret metals, types of fighters. Theso are What is Pete Everest himself experimental planes scientists made of? needles into the upper sky.
the Beli X II, to build. Its
The latest, took nine years. pair of rocket tubes give it 15,000lb of thrust, and it has a throttle so that Everest can con- trol the amount of fuel and oxidiser fed into each chamber.
windshield is heat and infra-red ray resistant. At 2,000 mlies an hour ordinary glass would
and at 100,000ft. melt,
He says: "Ordinary flesh and blood like everybody else."
Some people say Everest is made of finer steel even that of his rocket planes.
(COPYRIGHT)
than
TOMORROW: What is the heat barrior?
BEYOND GRANADA-EUROPE'S
BIGGEST GYPSY TOWN
By John Culmer
Madrid. sugar-cane plantations, until I the majority had been scooped THE town of Guadix, 30 came to the hot, dusty, sun- out underground, with only the chimney above the miles east of Granada, biered site which the gipsies cowl of a
call home.
soll. Others, with 1 single in the "deep south" of
narrow door and u email atit of Spain, is not a tourist re-
If you Inquire in Guadix you a window at either side, looked, will probably be told that no ir. the distance, sort, and the few guide one in the town has ever heard faces of pagan gods.
like the evil Well! Well! books that mention it con- of the Barrio de Santiago-gipsy
tent themselves with nam quarter-and I found that even With antiike industry the ing its 18th century you have a general idea of gipsies have burrowed and cathedral as the only place you can easily miss your way.
the direction In which it lles tunnelled in the ground and in the hills forming the rim of the Hikely to interest the visitor.
bowl-shaped arena, utilising To reach it you must go to the
foot of space to make QVUTY of the town where the back The guide books, how-
room for dwailings. And road stops and white-washed, you ever, are wrong, for hidden one-floor houses hide a narrow and stand on the "terrace" In climb off the rocky path behind Guadix is the largest rocky lane that winds in and front of one house you find that gipsy town in Europe, with out among them and gradually you are standing on the flot
swarming population estimated at more than
SELF-ANALYSIS BY
O
CECIL BEATON
A
the scenes
NCE upon a time Cecil And then, look at the advice He also gives us some electrity-6,000.
behind son ing peeps Walter Hardy Beaton, he gives to a man whose
This wants to be a photographer.
ufter the Coronation:→→ 60-year-old son of
push on timber magnate, photo- ""The photographer is of
"The Queen Mother, her long through status
four than the train held by
pages in grapher extraordinary of lower social
writer," he says.
acarlet, was in rollicking spirits the twentieth century, said,
la man intruder, the
the as she sulled towards me, and replying to a quiz about his macintosh who shouldn't be no wonder, for peeping from , traini likes and dislikes, that his there, the man outside looking under the purple velvet hero was Cecil Beaton, in. It's not a respectable pro- appeared the ruffled heads of
fession."
little Prince Charles and
Now it almost seems that be
la going back on this cholee. In
0.3
lecturer
in
An
Princess Anne.
with
"A Court official, who looked his new book about his ex-
as though he had just stepped periences
Wonderland, Well, well well. Apart from out of 'Alice in wildest America, IT GIVES ME the fact that I never thought to came in searching for some GREAT PLEASURE (Welden live to see the day when Cecil thing. Oh, there they are, he feld and Nicolson, 168,), there is Beaton would describe himself mumbled, as he dashed out a faint, very faint, rumour that as "the man in the macintosh the orb and sceptre. Mr B. is no longer so mad about who shouldn't be there,"
this. Mr B. as he used to be....
reeks me. What an admission. "It's time to realise now," he
That clever Mr B., privileged "":-
"The Queen heaved says, "that (mine) is the sort of to act as a camera on so many
and mado succem that should belong
to snob occasions, secretly threat-
a much younger age bracket." ened by a feeling of inadequacy? gesture such as actors use when
$5.
1955 GILES ANNUAL
a algh, exaggerated
coming off stage after, playing a My, my. For in this fascinat strenuous scene. You, the crown three hours. ing book Mr B. confesses that is hoovy after
It was this feeling of inadequary Yes, we are tired but still has that drove him to accept the to be done." - Invitation to lecture
women's clubs in the US, that All of which is charming, readable; I made him take lessons in speeca: 2n't.../17: Brilliantly
training so that he might acquit as good journalistically as any himself with honour, that made thing that has been written him, like another Crawile, re about what goes on behind the
to thousande of lucky, throne
stock will be limited.lucky American women the But don't let us kid ourselves
Bookings ac
SOUTH CHINA MORNIN
ST LTD, HONG KONG & KOWLO
of his royal sittings
about a feeling of inadequaey as Boston tóla: thoné, azeċdotus, Bertha Vitáring about photo- Du Ha who paid nearly $1,000 per
graphing the een at vario
lecture
Nancy Spain
was why I decided to courtyards
beyond Granada. the beet@elds and the
POCKET CARTOON
by OSBERT LANCASTER
.
root of another.
Not nomads
starts to climb.
Soon there are no more houses but white-washed Cve fronts with, in front of them, tiny the size. of the "areas" of old London houses, TO one knows how long this brightened with pots of roses curious "city" has been in- and geraniums and occasional trellised vines.
hablted, These are the that gipsies have probably lived although experts say "luxury" caves of the Barrio de Santiago, but the lane winds here for more than 500 years. past them and branches off into a network of tiny alleys to the parts of Spain, these people are Like gipsies in many other. top of a low hill where it dips not nomads, and they cling to suddenly and there, spread out their rabbit warren "city" with below, is a vast amphitheatre. curious persistence. Some of
I
A hot, wind
them occasionally work in the acarby beetfields, although they live as gipsies do everywhere elso -mostly by their, wits.
WALKED down' a few steps,
I caught a glimpse of a black- and I was standing In the smith's forge, with a fire blazing. centre of the biggest gipsy cave in the darimess of one of the town and the largest troglodyto larger caves, but otherwis I pow population in the world,
no sign of any occupation or
wandere
A hot wind mucked up the craft in this "town," where hait dust and sent rapidly moving the population dives spirals of grit and sand oddying ground.
cross the vast grenn.
But if the Barrio de Santiago --- Tawny-akcininet girls
with is a strange placa in the daytime, colls of black, snake-like hair, it is wrapped in an oir, of and the young men in rigged mystoty, at night."," trousers and shirts, leaped across the rocks and in and out among light showing, It llos colled in Ha Darkgllent, with hardly a the caves with the speed and shallow Basin of earth like grace of panthers,"\"
some noxious serpent.
And although I had the im- pression that this was a deserted
As I stumbled over the Felty" I was conscious that I was uneven ground, uheden – figures being watched by invisible even brushed past me in the darkón from every one of the hundreds news and I heard the low mut- of caves rising in tier After tier, ter pf volces
single, e cones - thard / wags: dit
but guide-book