Records

In paper underwear and three woolen sweaters; in paper socks with fleece-lined boots; with four pairs of mittens--paper, silk, wool, fleeced leather--and wool-edged goggles to keep his eyeballs from freezing, Pilot Jean Callizo climbed up and up from Le Bourget airdrome, near Paris, in his specially fitted altitude plane. It was late afternoon, with a high ceiling (cloud level). Picking a hole at 2,000 metres (about 6,600 ft.) Pilot Callizo steered up for "the edge of heaven." Beyond the clouds was fair weather.

Below, cities and countryside became indistinguishable. The earth looked "dull-colored, concave, saucer-like." Mist intervened and the plane droned up, isolated in boundless space. At 4,500 metres, Pilot Callizo clapped an oxygen tube to his mouth, fed his motor the same combustion-sustaining gas. At 11,500 metres the mer cury of his thermometer vanished from sight at 58DEG below zero.

"My eyes felt heavy and I had a consuming desire to sleep. . . . I felt myself puffed out and de formed." (Atmospheric pressure had decreased, letting his body cells expand.)

"Nevertheless, I was always con scious and I saw the queer, deep, dark blue of a cloudless and mistless sky; a far deeper blue than that seen from the earth's sur face. . . . I could feel the tightening of the contracting metal parts of the plane." (Contraction was due to intense cold). When his barograph registered 12,800 metres, Pilot Callizo descended, hovering at 500 metres, to collect his shocked faculties. After inspection of his instruments, officials credited him with having flown higher than any man-- 12,422 metres (40,820 ft., nearly 8 mi., two-fifths of a mile higher than the U. S. recordholder, Lieut. John A. Macready; 376 metres higher than Pilot Callizo's own previous world's record.)