I opened the throttle and nosed up. I gained the first few thousand feet rapidly. The higher I went the slower I climbed. At 20,000 feet climbing was difficult. The air was much thinner. The power of my engine was greatly diminished. I began to notice the effect of altitude. Breathing was an effort. I didn’t get enough air when I did breathe. I sighed often. My heart beat faster. I wasn’t sleepy. I was dopey. I was very cold, although it was summer.
I looked up into the sky. It was intensely blue, deep blue; bluer than I had ever seen a sky. I was above all haze. I looked down at the earth. Selfridge Field was very small under me. The little town of Mount Clemens seemed to be very close to the field. Lake St. Clair was just a little pond. Detroit seemed to be almost under me, although I knew it was about twenty miles from Selfridge Field. I could see a lot of little Michigan towns clothing the earth to the north and northwest of Selfridge. Everything beneath me seemed to have shoved together. The earth seemed to be without movement. I felt suspended in enormous space. I was 23,000 feet high by my altimeter.
I was dopey. My perception and reaction were ga-ga. I was cold, too. To hell with it. It said 24,500 feet. I eased the throttle full and nosed down.
I lost altitude very rapidly and with very little effort at first. After that it got more and more normal. I didn’t come down too fast. It was too loud on my ears. I came down fairly slowly, so as to accommodate myself to the change in air pressure as I descended.
It was warm and stuffy on the ground.
I saw the Flight Surgeon at dinner that evening.
“I worked a Hawk up to 24,500 feet today,” I told him proudly. “Gee, it sure felt funny up there without oxygen.”
“Without oxygen?” he asked.
I nodded my head.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “You can’t go that high without oxygen. The average pilot’s limit is around 15,000 to 18,000 feet. You’re young and in good shape. Maybe you got to twenty. But you just imagined you went higher than that.”