Record in Red

A million workers tramped through Moscow's Red Square one day last week. They cheered the 17th All-Union Communist Party Congress which was meeting in the Kremlin. Even louder they cheered the news that a Soviet balloon had climbed into the sky a mile higher than man had ever before ascended.

The balloon flight came as a complete national surprise. For the past six months Osoaviakhim (civilian aviation society) had been planning a stratosphere flight, but its thunder was stolen last autumn when the Red Army balloon U. S. S. R. got away first to an altitude record of 11.8 mi. (TIME, Oct. 9). Quietly Osoaviakhim plugged its preparations. Pavel Fedeseemko, a famed civilian pilot, was in charge. lya Oususkin, youthful physicist, was his first aide, Andrey Vasenko his engineer. With only a few officials privy to their secret, the crew had its balloon Osoaviak-him I inflated at Osoaviakhim's airdrome outside Moscow one morning last week. By noon the ground station was proudly issuing copies of radio messages from the balloon, that it had climbed to 67,585 ft., that all was well, that it was about to come down.

All that afternoon and next day, the joyous crowds in Moscow's streets asked one another: "Have they landed yet? Have they been found?" The balloon had been reported drifting southeast of Moscow but nobody was sure. At 3 p. m., behind the Kremlin's closed doors, A. S. Enukidze, stolid secretary of the Central Executive Committee, mounted the rostrum before the Congress. Gravely he began: "Comrades, I have bad news for you. The Osoaviakhim balloon met disaster yesterday afternoon between 3:30 and 5 o'clock near the village of Potisky Ostrog [150 mi. southeast of Moscow]. The balloon and gondola crashed and the three aeronauts were killed instantly." A mournful sigh swept like a wave through the hall. Then: "It seems the disaster was complete--not only the pilots but the gondola and its scientific apparatus were utterly lost." Spontaneously the delegates rose, chanted the stirring Soviet hymn to the dead. But outside on the streets jubilant paraders continued proudly to congratulate each other on Russia's latest triumph. They were not to know the truth until next day's morning newspapers. But even then they could not know the whole truth. Nobody could. There was not enough left of the crushed gondola or the three broken bodies to supply the story of the tragedy. Guesses: 1) Winter weather had contracted the balloon's gas to such a point that it fell like a dead weight. 2) Ice weighted it down. 3) Some instrument outside the gondola chafed at the shroud lines until they broke, thus allowing the gondola to fall free from the bag. One discovery was made, to heighten the honor of Aeronauts Fedeseemko, Oususkin &Vasenko as their ashes were laid away in the Kremlin wall. A logbook and barograph, still intact, showed that the balloon had climbed to 72,178 ft.-- 13.67 mi.*

*Since the Soviet Union is not represented in Federation Aeronautique Internationale its records are not officially recognized. However, both Osoaviakhim's and last year's Red Army performances surpass the official world's record of 61,237 ft. made last November by Lieut. Commander G. W. ("Tex") Settle, U. S. N. and Major Chester L. Fordney.

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