For many people who lived firsthand the strange passion for ballooning and for those whom loved this activity as an important part of their professional careers or lives, one of the things that most will miss is some sort of romanticism and adventure that were the trademark of those pioneering years. Dr. Webb Haymaker's "Operation Stratomouse" -which appeared in Military Medicine in September 1956 and we reproduce here more than 50 years later- still today is one of the most accurate and finest chronicles of the day-to-day life during a balloon launch campaign, ever written.