Hot Aeronauts

One day last week at Curtiss Airport, L. I. a group of men was observed stretching a huge, soiled piece of cloth between two poles alongside a trench. A stovepipe was rigged between the trench and a hole in the fabric. Someone touched a match to a pile of kindling in the trench. Soon the fabric began to bulge and billow with hot air inside it. After ten minutes of fire-stoking and manipulating of ropes, the fabric took shape as a balloon, tugging and straining at its guys. A trapeze was rigged below the balloon's mouth, and just above the trapeze was a platform holding an automatic cinema run by batteries. Out from the little crowd stepped a handsome young man, shedding his cloak with a nourish to reveal gorgeous white silk tights, glittering with spangles. He was Louis ("King Louie") Bonette, junior member of Bonette Bros., daredevil aerialists. Daredevil Bonette perched himself on the trapeze, looked to his parachute, waved a nonchalant signal, and sailed off skyward in the hot air balloon with the camera clicking down at him.

Thus began the "re-enactment"' of the first balloon ascension made 150 years ago at Annonay, France by the Brothers Montgolfier. The Montgolfiers' balloon (globe aerostatique) likewise was lifted by hot air. It carried a lire grate beneath the open mouth of the bag to maintain the hot air supply. The Bonettes were commemorating that event, but their balloon relied on its original supply of hot air. At about 3,000 ft. it struck a layer of cold air, began to shrink and descend. That should have been the signal for King Louie to jump with his chute, but now he felt he must stay and look after the camera. Faster & faster the bag dropped until a ground wind caught it, dragged it across the town of Valley Stream. As Bonette & camera dropped safely upon the roof of a lumberyard, the bag fouled a telephone pole, spilling out such an enormous belch of black smoke that scared villagers thought the town was afire.

Altogether the performance was tame for the Bonettes who are not brothers but father and adopted son. The father, "Professor" Clarence C. Bonette, 61, looks like Adolf Hitler and has a complete mouthful of gleaming gold teeth. He has been ballooning and jumping for exactly 40 years. He was taught by Sam Baldwin of the late famed Baldwin Brothers who began barnstorming soon after the Civil War and had a "balloon farm" near Quincy, Ill. Father Clarence, who limps, boasts that he has at various times broken every bone in his body. Says he: I'm a fatalist. And I'm simply stuck on jumping." The Bonettes are believed to be the only hot-air balloonists now in the business.

A favorite Bonette stunt is the ''bomb drop." At the proper moment the daredevil, who has been stunting on the trapeze, hanging by knees and by teeth, pulls a cord releasing a bag of bombs which explode beneath the balloon, enveloping it in a cloud of smoke and a glorious blaze of fireworks. Completely concealed he then yanks his "quickknife" cord, a gadget which cuts the parachute free of its bag.

In a moment the enraptured crowd sees a scarlet-&-white-clad Bonette floating gracefully down out of the smoke and flame beneath a red-white-&-blue parachute, from which he hangs by his teeth. When admiring gawpers marvel at the strength of his teeth. Professor Bonette extracts them, proudly passes them around.

Another Bonette favorite is the act in which the performer appears to be shot out of the mouth of a cannon, suspended horizontally beneath the balloon, with a tremendous report and magnificent belching of black smoke. That is something of a hoax. What really happens is this: the Bonette lying within the "cannon" (stove pipe) pulls a cord which lets the mouth of the cannon drop about 45DEG, and slides out in a thick shower of black confetti, while a sawed-off shotgun explodes from the rear end of the cannon.

Hot-air ballooning is much cheaper than gas-ballooning. A Bonette bag can be sent up for only $1.30. The bag is made of unbleached muslin. The hot-air fire is fed with sugar barrels, because hard wood gives few sparks; and kerosene to make heavy smoke which coats the inside of the bag with thick, leakproof soot. An assistant must remain inside the stifling bag while it is being filled, to make sure it does not catch fire.

The Bonettes, long idle, were resurrected by an airshow promoter named William B. White who had discovered it was the Montgolfier anniversary. He hopes to celebrate the occasion for the rest of the year at local fairs. Most of all he wants a chance to stage a Bonette ascension at Chicago's exposition when Prof. Auguste Piccard makes his stratosphere flight./- The Bonettes think they can break Father Bonette's own world hot-air record of 10,000 ft.

/-The stratosphere balloon will be piloted by Lieut.-(Com. Thomas S. W. ("Tex") Settle or Ward Tunte Van Orman, alternate. Prof. Piccard's alternate as observer will be his twin brother Jean.

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