A Flier's Life

Only rugged, cheerful, clean-cut, abstemious young men in pluperfect health need apply. Those are the boys the U.S. Army wants for its fliers. And then what happens? After these super men fly a few years, some of them become irritable, neurotic, deaf,with stomach trouble, nightmares, high blood pressure, liable to die several years before their time from heart disease. Such a dismaying picture of fliers' occupational diseases might be put together from the solid medical handbook for fliers published last week by famed Army Flight Surgeons Malcolm Cummings Grow and Harry George Armstrong (Fit to Fly--Appleton-Century; $2.50).

But the book also contains much useful information on how to avoid just such a dismal outcome.

P: Although 27 is the upper age limit for new Army fliers, the doctors claim that "the older a pilot gets the safer he becomes, up to about the age of 38, and that he then maintains that degree of safety as long as he maintains the required degree of fitness ... up to about age 60."

P:During swift turns and pullouts from dives, pilots cannot avoid momentary blackout--loss of consciousness--because blood rushes from the head. Small, heavy-set pilots are more resistant to blackout than tall, slender men, and those leading a sedentary life have more resistance than men in athletic training. Men with high blood pressure are less affected by dives.

P: In most planes, control handles and numerals on instruments are covered with radium paint for visibility in darkness. "This radium paint gives off emanations which are absorbed by the body and, in large enough doses, can cause radium poisoning." Such poisoning, say the doctors, is unlikely. "There is some danger, however, of flakes of the radium paint on the control handles sticking to the hands and later being transferred to the mouth." Preventive: all control handles should have their radium paint covered with a coat of shellac or varnish.

P: A frequent cause of accidents is altitude sickness. Most fliers still believe that their altitude tolerance is the limit to which they can fly without oxygen and not collapse. Actually, oxygen should be taken as low as 10,000 ft. A complete lack of oxygen, for only one minute, say the doctors, may destroy irreplaceable brain cells, produce tiny hemorrhages, degeneration of the adrenal glands.

P:Parachute jumping "has no effect on either the body or mind . . . and falling free ... is not a harrowing experience." (Captain Armstrong should know, for he has jumped as a medical experiment.) "Until one gets very close to the earth there is no sensation of falling. One feels as though he were simply suspended in space. As one gets close to the earth, however, and the eyes are able to detect the shortening of the distance between the body and the earth, the sensation of falling appears."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.