Salt Lake Telegram | 1937-07-19 | Page 4 | Blaze Ends Strato Hop

Start of Piccard Test Flight I Tx I - ' ii i ''U'nt' FINISH WAS IN FLAMES ON IOWA TREE TOP Stratosphere explorer found dynamite capi unreliable. Blaze Ends StratoHop ROCHESTER, Minn, July It (IN8 In atrict seclusion Dr. Jean Piccard today pored over what data he aaved from hia disastrous dis-astrous flight in an experimental stratoaphera balloon with hardly a thought about his narrow escape es-cape from death. Eager only to lay plana for a future ascent higher in th sky than man ha vr gone before, the Belgian aolentlat denied him-elf him-elf to visitors today after a niKht'a sound alep. Or. Piccard barely javed himself him-self yaatardey when a cluster of th amall balloon that had carried car-ried him about 11.000 fact abov ground suddenly burst into flam aa he was about to land. He Jumped free, hut the gondola was destroyed and all the scientific Instrument in it. In coming down near Lansing. Iowa, about 123 mile aouth of her, th craft took a uddn dip whil passing over a tree. Crashing through th branches. th gondola was finally caught just a tew feet above ground. Dr. Piccard decided to blast loos th upper cluster of balloon with dynamite dy-namite caps rigged for that purpose. pur-pose. Th xplolon in aome way Ig-. Ig-. nlted th lower cluster also and a curtain of flam cascaded over th gondola. How Dr. Piccard escaped es-caped at ail not even he himself knew. He said later h just jumped and ran.