Stratospheric Flying

Those few flyers who have been able to get seven miles above the earth have been at the top of the earth's atmosphere layer. They have been able to stay there only a few moments, for the temperature is 75 degrees below Fahrenheit zero and the air-pressure is one-eighth of what man is built to endure. Nor could the thin air sustain the planes or sufficiently burn the fuel.

Beyond the "atmosphere" is the "stratosphere," a rarefied layer extending 25 mi. further, where it meets the Heaviside Layer of tenuous, electrified gases off which, in theory, radio waves "bounce" from transmitter to receiver.

Last week one Heinz Guenther Perl, 21, precocious Berlin inventor who has belonged to the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin since he was 15 (for inventing a table stove), averred that in four months he would fly through the cold, thin stratosphere. Professor Albert Einstein approved his plan on theoretical grounds. So did Count Georg Wilhelm Alexander Haus Arco, President of the Telefunken Co. (radio builders). So did professors at the Berlin Polytechnic Institute. So, in effect, did the enthusiastic New York Times which obtained and printed a long exclusive Perl interview.

The Perl plan is to build a 22-ft. duralumin fuselage shaped like a dirigible, hermetically sealed. Inside would be a compressor which would supply air at sea level pressure and warm it for the pilot and the motor (which would be within the fuselage). Outside would be the propeller, wings resembling those of a flying fish, and tail fins. Landing wheels would be retracted into the body.

Inventor Perl calculates to leave the ground at 110 m. p. h., reach 310 m. p. h. in 20 minutes, attain the stratosphere by a direct climb at 45 degrees (instead of the usual circling) in 100 minutes, thereafter fly at 650 to 750 m. p. h.