Leonardo da Vinci, who was so variously ambitious that he wanted to master birds' accomplishments as well as man's, declared in 1505 that no man would ever get his feet far off the ground until he had thorough knowledge of air and its currents. The invention of engines provided aviation with a shortcut, proved Leonardo partly wrong. But at the same time man did study the air, developed four types of motorless flying: gliding (coasting downward on still air); slope soaring (on rising air currents along the shoulder of a hill); cold front soaring (on the brow of a thunderhead); and thermal soaring (on rising currents of air in the open). So specialized are these techniques that a skillful soarer looks upon power flyers with the same superiority that a sailboat skipper feels towards a motor-boater.
Until this year slope soaring has been the principal technique for record-making in the U. S. But when a Russian named Victor Rastorgeff went up over the perfectly flat country of central Russia last May and on successive flights soared 335, 374, 405 miles (previous world's record: 313 miles), U. S. soaring experts began to wonder if the hills around Elmira, N.Y. and on the edges of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley really are the best places in the country for their sport. Richard Chichester du Pont, Paul du Pont, and Lewin Barringer of the Soaring Society of America looked at a map, picked out the great plains of northwest Texas and Oklahoma as the best spot for experimental thermal soaring.
Last week came first results. Tall, tan Lewin Barringer wedged himself into the small cockpit of the German-built, Du Pont-owned sailplane Minimoa, was towed into the sky by an airplane at Wichita Falls, Tex., cut loose at 10:45 a. m. Six hours later he landed at Spartan Airport, Tulsa, Okla. Over Oklahoma City he had soared 7,500 feet into the air, 1,267 feet higher than the U. S. altitude record set by his friend Dick du Pont in 1934. He had covered 210 miles, 52 better than the U. S. distance record, also Du Pont's. When he landed, cramped and tired, he said he could have gone on & on with the greatest of ease, had landed at Tulsa because that was his objective.
Lewin Barringer is considered in soaring circles one of the most careful gliders. Before a flight he pores over charts, plans alternate routes, prepares for every contingency of weather. One of ten in the U. S. to hold a Silver C License (international gliding license), he is also licensed to fly transport planes. The most ardent sailing enthusiasts, sea and sky, take to motor ships when they want to get somewhere.