Red Jump

The Russian army air service, which lately sent stratonauts higher than any had flown before (TIME. Oct. 9), last week dropped a flyer farther than any man had ever dropped. The man dropped was a pilot named Victor Evceyef. Swaddled in heavy clothes with an oxygen mask over his face and a parachute over his stern, Evceyef went up with a comrade from Moscow Airdrome. Mile after mile the plane climbed, into atmosphere --34DEG F. At 4 1/2 mi. Pilot Evceyef jumped. Instead of opening his 'chute, he plummeted for more than two minutes until he was only 500 ft. above the ground. Then he yanked his ripcord. Said he afterward: ''The jolt was so great that for a moment everything was dark. Then the sun shone green. I made a normal landing with my parachute [in a forest] and walked back to the airfield where they greeted me with shouts of delight because they thought I was dead." Evceyef's record beat the previous mark, held by an Englishman, by more than a mile. The jolt suffered by Jumper Evceyef was no worse than if he had jumped from only 2,000 ft. and pulled his ripcord at 500. A man's body attains maximum velocity (120 m.p.h.) after falling 1,400 ft. Evceyef probably fell at 200 m.p.h. through rarefied atmosphere before the denser atmosphere of lower altitudes slowed him down to 120.

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