200 Miles Up.

200 Miles Up: The Conquest of the Upper Air, by J. Gordon Vaeth, aeronautical engineer at the U.S. Navy Special Devices Center, Office of Naval Research. Copyright 1951 by the Ronald Press Company; dedicated to Joanne Corell Vaeth. The Preface calls it a non-technical but strictly accurate summary of high-altitude research by rocket and plastic balloon, with illustrations some of which had never been published, and conducts the reader step by step through the firing of a V-2. Vaeth’s acknowledgments thank the Navy, the Air Force and the Department of Defense Office of Public Information for security clearance of the manuscript and illustrations.

Eleven chapters run from “The Upper Atmosphere—A Frontier of Scientific Exploration,” “The Atmospheric Ocean,” “Upper Air Research Instruments” and “Vehicles for Upper Air Research” through “Project Skyhook—Upper Air Research by Balloon,” “The White Sands Proving Ground” and “Principles of Rocket Flight,” to the V-2 (“Inaugurator of Modern High Altitude Rocketry” and “How a V-2 Is Fired”), “The High-Flying Aerobee,” and “The Viking—Latest Upper Air Research Vehicle.” It closes with indexes of subjects and names. Photographs and drawings show the rocket installations, instrument payloads and cloud photographs taken from altitude.

The Viking chapter anticipates Milton Rosen’s The Viking Rocket Story (1955), also in this catalog, and Krause’s V-2 research report (Catalog C) covers the same V-2 Panel work.