Wings Over Everest

Every morning last week a knot of sturdy Britons, surrounded by gawping Hindu hillmen, watched a snorting little Puss Moth skitter off the field at Purnea, near the Nepal border. The Moth climbed northward up the Kusi River Valley, then carefully wheeled as it approached Nepal. Ahead, across a prodigious frozen ocean of glaciers, crevasses and icy peaks, rose the highest and holiest mountain on earth. Only by trigonometry had man ever measured Mount Everest's vast height (29,140 ft.). Only in his tenacious imagination had he ever scaled it.

Back to Purnea, the Moth brought consistently discouraging news to the Houston-Mt. Everest Expedition. Flying conditions were bad. One day low hanging clouds obscured most of the surrounding terrain, an important drawback because the expedition's scientific aim was to map aerially 250 sq. mi. surrounding the peak. Another day a great white snow plume whirled menacingly about Everest's cone. The flyers were waiting for a wind velocity not to exceed 40 m.p.h. They fell impatiently to tinkering with their ships and equipment, already at taut perfection. They had been at Purnea nine days, but precious time was slipping away. Soon the southwest monsoon would set in, drenching and beclouding earth and sky for months.

Jump-Off. On the tenth day, trial balloon observation showed that at 33,000 ft. the wind velocity had dropped, although dust haze hung high in the Himalayas. The expedition's leader, Air-Commodore Peregrine Forbes Morant Fellowes, who had led the party on its hazardous 25-day flight out from England and who won a bar to his D. S. O. in 1918 by bombing the Zeebrugge Lock gates from a nonchalant altitude of 200 ft., took the Puss Moth up once more at 5:30 a. m. for observation.

He returned to Purnea with a report of "reasonably satisfactory" flying conditions in the Everest vicinity. That was all the Britons were waiting for. The two specially built Westland planes, shipped by boat from England and powered with supercharged Bristol Pegasus radial motors whose propellers had been torqued to provide maximum power development at 13,000 ft., were rolled out at 8:25 on Lalbalu airdrome. Into one stepped Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, Marquess of Douglas & Clydesdale. To focus the motion picture camera, fixed, electrically heated and aimed blind earthward, Col. L. V. S. Blacker, Wartime aviator, climbed into the fuselage.

Into the pilot's cockpit of the Westland's sistership went Flight Lieutenant D. F. Mclntyre, brother officer of Lord Clydesdale in the City of Glasgow's auxiliary air squadron. His observer was S. R. Bonnett, chief cinematographer of the expedition.

Lord Clydesdale was leading as the two planes slowly climbed to 10,000 ft. He and Lieut. Mclntyre waved at each other that all was well. Thirty minutes later, Everest loomed in sight. After 9 a. m. both planes were at 31,000 ft. over Lothi, southern peak of the Everest group. "Both machines," related Lord Clydesdale, ''encountered a steady down current." At 10:05 the planes found themselves skimming the world's highest peak with a bare 100 ft. to spare.

At this point Cinematographer Bonnett doubled up with a severe pain in his stomach. What he should have done, as his companion observer did do, was to pop his head out of the cockpit and take still photographs of the icy summit. Instead he was barely able to stop the leak in his oxygen pipe with his handkerchief as both planes slid down the long descent from their objective. It was later found that neither cinema machine had functioned continuously throughout the flight. Only other mishap reported, when the two planes, having traveled 320 mi., alighted at Purnea exactly three hours after the flight began, was that Lieut. Mclntyre's electrically heated gloves had performed too efficiently, blistering the aviator's hands. All hands were delighted with a rough rag jolly well done.

Sportsman. Like another party of Britons under Explorer Hugh Ruttledge, who were crawling toward the same goal afoot, the Mt. Everest flyers were engaged basically in a sporting proposition. Others had ascended to the stratosphere, descended to the bathysphere, flown all the oceans. The Houston-Mt. Everest group surmounted the last superlative. A famed sportsman was in their midst--Lord Clydesdale. Plump Lady Houston, widow of a shipping tycoon, who underwrote the British Schneider Cup entry in 1931 (TIME, Sept. 14, 1931) gave her name and money to the expedition. Lord Clydesdale gave it eclat. Until last January he was the provisional leader. When Commodore Fellowes took command, Lord Clydesdale became Squadron Leader. He and Commodore Fellowes took turns at the reconnoissance work.

To make the flight, Lord Clydesdale had to get permission from his Scotch constituency. Aged 30, two years ago he won a seat in the Commons. At Oxford (where he did not belong to the Pacifistic Union) few expected Lord Clydesdale to become much of a politico. Everyone, however, knew he could fight. In 1924 he won the Scotch amateur middleweight title. He had gone to Glasgow with his friend, classmate and mentor, Edward Francis ("Eddie") Eagan (Fighting for Fun), to enter the championship bout. The reigning champion, a coal miner, gave His Lordship a terrible drubbing, broke one of his teeth half in two, left another hanging by a thread.

"Douglo," ventured second Eagan, "don't you think we'd better. . . . I mean, we could just announce that. . . ."

"I am a Douglas, a Douglas!" sputtered stout-hearted Douglo, and rose to vanquish his foeman.

The blood of the Black Douglasses in his veins used to cause blond, curly-haired

Lord Clydesdale to drive the 400 twisty-laned miles between Oxford and Dungavel in one day. He first took up flying after his 1924 round-the-world boxing tour with Eddie Eagan.

The Mt. Everest expedition had permission for only one try at the peak. The Maharajah of Nepal, a wily Mongol, above whose small craggy kingdom the flight took place, did not want Britishers taking too many pictures over his head. To his devious mind the proposed air-mapping sounded like preparation for an invasion.

The expedition had no permission at all to transgress the Tibet border, which crosses the north slope of the peak. Pilots Clydesdale and Mclntyre were careful not to swing over the Delai Lama's land. In the opinion of Tibetan monks, they should have given up the whole notion. "The Goddess Mother of the World," the monks said, was an angry, vengeful deity. Quick to maim intruders, she killed outright 13 of them who attempted to climb her in 1924. Such talk might have curdled the blood of many a man--but not the blood of a Black Douglas.

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