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16 February 1929

Brig.-Gen. B.D. Foulois,
Washington,
D.C.

PERSONAL

Dear General Foulois:

Many thanks for your kind letter of the 14th on the balloon-fog experiment.

I am familiar, of course, with Lieut. Doolittle's work, etc. My proposal was originally made to the Guggenheim-Departmental fog committee in 1926. There were present: Admiral Cone, Briggs and Dellinger of Bureau of Standards, Petersen of the Post Office, Schoeffel and Reichelderfer of the Navy, Capt. Kraus and Mr Luckey of the Air Corps and yours truly. The minutes read: ***"The committee was in favor of the suggestion made by Mr Jones that the use of a balloon in this connection be tried out at the College Park station of the Department of Commerce."***

Subsequent investigation of the possibility of borrowing a balloon and winch from Army or Navy was not encouraging and I never succeeded in getting the Assistant Secretary to decide on the matter of an allotment of funds for conducting the experiment by contract.

Thereafter the committee seemed to cease functioning and I thought enough of the scheme to suggesto that the Army try it out.

The radiobeacon now in actual service gets the pilot to the field, the radio orother altimeter will give small heights above the ground, the automatic pilot will maintain course and height but, so far as I know, only the beacon is in practical operation. My proposals costs but little from a financial point of view and any results are immediate. In actual use, if successful, the two balloons would cost only about as much as one beacon light installed.

As a member of the Reserve, too, I am interest in a trial. Its success would mean attacks under cover of fog.

Yours,