[
    {
        "id": 216114,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 413,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "347\n\nmy pilot to tow me over the town and tell him that I will release the plane at an altitude of 300 metres and that I will climb under my own steam to 2,000 metres. Sceptical glances from my Chinese friends, who find it difficult to accept that a European might do something better than a Son of Heaven.\n\nAt 11:45, I take off. At first we follow the river. The town is to our left, set on terrace up the mountainside. There is not a breath of air; all is calm. It was as I expected. Reaching the tip of the peninsula, we turn 90 degree to the left, and this time, still climbing at one metre per second, we begin to fly across the town. As we arrive over the roofs, I sense a number of small thermal currents; my gauges frequently indicate two metres per second. But I am still only at 200 metres, and too far from the airfield, in case I should fail to find serious thermals.\n\nWhen we come over San Shin Sze, the plane begins a slight turn to the left, and I sense that he is going to fly over the river again; my altimeter reads just 300 metres, and I release the glider in a light thermal, when I place myself in tight spirals. The tow had lasted seven minutes. The sky was completely blue, without a cloud, however with a slight violet haze over the ground. No wind. I was obliged to fly solely with the aid of thermal currents. Almost immediately, I find myself in a weak current. After one or two minutes, I am even descending at a speed of about 1.5 metres per second. I am flying at 75 km per hour, at an angle of about 35 degrees. I decide to resume the direction of the river and to approach the airfield but I find that I have travelled further away than I thought. There was no chance of getting back to the island from which I had taken off. I spot a great sandbank and decide to attempt a last chance to fly towards the point of the town, where I had observed and felt some good currents at the start of my tow.\n\n-\n+\n\nAt 60 metres above the roofs at last! - a few strong buffets and my two gauges are suddenly showing two metres of climb. Steep spirals, at an angle of 45 degrees, speed 80 km per hour, and I am climbing this time evenly and without being buffeted. 200 metres, 500 metres, 1,000 metres, I am always turning, always widening my turns. The fight becomes easier and easier and this time I am climbing at three metres a second. I see the magnificent panorama of the town, as if gripped in a vice between two great rivers; I see, quite small, the English, French and American gunboats (the \"Tutuila\", where I used to go\n\n3",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216127,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 426,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "360 \n\ndate was April 25, 1940, but his contemporary annotation of photographs puts the date as May 24.\n\nConditions were perfect and there was no sign of the Japanese fighters which he feared could attack his plane - painted in Chinese military colours. Although at one point he lost altitude badly after dismissing his tow, he soon found the thermals and soared to 5,700 feet and stayed aloft for four hours 44 minutes, an Asian record.\n\nHe writes: 'I see my embassy, tiny, great water reservoirs, the beginning of the magnificent Yangtse gorges, innumerable rice fields looking like contour lines on a relief map. A splendid landscape in miniature, the kind the Chinese love for their gardens.'\n\nHe notes at one point flying over the Tutuila 'where I used to go for a good curry.' This U.S. Yangtse patrol boat with a displacement of 395 tons was marooned at Chungking by the Japanese occupation of areas down-river like Hankow. The USS Tutuila was bombed by the Japanese in July 1941, the first U.S. Navy ship damaged by Axis powers in World War Two. It was decommissioned in January 1942 and handed over to the Chinese in March under Lend-Lease and renamed Mei Yuan. One can imagine that in wartime Chungking, Europeans could be assured of a decent meal aboard a U.S. patrol boat that was more or less a permanent fixture at the quayside.\n\nPictures show Louis beside the machine with an air force pilot who was possibly the one who towed him up, and a few others nearby. Afterwards, massive crowds have gathered around Louis's plane to celebrate the record-breaking flight. He was justifiably proud of his achievement and maintained his interest in aviation, flying between subsequent diplomatic posts in a succession of small private planes.\n\nLouis de San was transferred to Hong Kong in 1941; on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, he secured a berth on a freighter which took him and his wife to Ceylon and they passed the war in Africa. Louis de San held various diplomatic posts for Belgium, ending in Damascus in the 1970s. He died in 1995.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]