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.