{"id":76092,"date":"2020-09-26T19:39:48","date_gmt":"2020-09-26T16:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/duo-dared-to-cross-atlantic-in-balloon-and-vanished\/"},"modified":"2020-09-26T19:39:48","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T16:39:48","slug":"duo-dared-to-cross-atlantic-in-balloon-and-vanished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/duo-dared-to-cross-atlantic-in-balloon-and-vanished\/","title":{"rendered":"#Duo dared to cross Atlantic in balloon, and vanished"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Duo dared to cross Atlantic in balloon, and vanished<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n The crowds began to gather at dawn, although dozens of people had insisted upon camping out all night on a sprawling Hamptons meadow fearful of missing even a minute of the momentous event \u2014 the launch of the Free Life, the helium balloon poised to become the first ever to cross the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

For four years, residents of the Springs hamlet in East Hampton, whose summer regulars included artist Willem de Kooning and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jean Stafford, had pitched in to help two unlikely adventurers prepare for the more than 3,000-mile journey. Local merchants donated meals and supplies, and one cafe owner housed the amateur aeronauts \u2014 actress Pamela Brown, 28, and her commodities-broker husband Rodney Anderson, 32 \u2014 for free.<\/p>\n

Abercrombie & Fitch outfitted the crew with survival gear. A volunteer built shelves inside the balloon\u2019s circular gondola, which measured 12 feet wide by four feet deep, and were lined with hundreds of ping pong balls for buoyancy. A case of champagne for the celebratory landing in France five days later was stowed inside.<\/p>\n

British balloonist Malcolm Brighton, 32, signed on to pilot the giant 80-foot-tall orange and yellow Free Life just a month before the journey.<\/p>\n

On the day of the launch \u2014 \u201ca sparkling September Sunday\u201d in 1970, noted Esquire magazine \u2014 the Springs fire department filled the balloon with gas from tanks stacked on trucks as the meadow filled with professional and amateur photographers eager to chronicle the historic take-off. There was a festive air as families lugging picnic baskets accompanied by excited children and dogs carved out their space on the grass \u2014 a scene the Easthampton Star described as \u201ca beautiful, old-fashioned, surrealist pageant.\u201d By the time the balloon lifted off in the early afternoon, more than 1,500 were gathered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe launch was so perfect,\u201d said filmmaker Genie Chipps Henderson, 78, a member of the ground crew who recently produced a commemorative film about the event for the East Hampton LTV network<\/a>. \u201cThere was not a cloud in the sky as this incredible eight-story balloon lifted off as if it was a ballet dancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pamela
Pamela Brown in red and American Rod Anderson being interviewed before the flight.<\/span>The LIFE Picture Collection via<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe punched each other in the arm,\u201d recalled poet Rosita Benson as she watched the balloon glide across Gardiners Bay and Long Island Sound. \u201cHistory. We were part of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

But others were not so buoyant. Film producer Alfred Crown seemed to offer a more realistic assessment of the event when he told Esquire, \u201cThey\u2019re sure in a hurry to die, aren\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Brown and Anderson were so sure of making history that they sold off their furniture and left their Upper East Side apartment to raise more than $100,000 for their grand adventure. \u201cThey called it feeding the monster in the backyard,\u201d said Henderson.<\/p>\n

When their money ran out, Brown turned to her successful Kentucky clan. Brown\u2019s father, John Young Brown, was a powerful attorney and state legislator, who indulged his favorite daughter and helped finance the trip<\/a>. Brown\u2019s older brother had taken over Kentucky Fried Chicken six years before.<\/p>\n

It was Anderson who became obsessed with the idea of the trans-Atlantic balloon trip, according to Henderson. A classical pianist and amateur navigator who had learned to use a sextant, he had recently worked as director of admissions at New York University and enlisted the school\u2019s leading meteorological expert to help plan the journey.<\/p>\n

It would be the fifth attempt at an Atlantic balloon crossing since 1873. The most recent, in 1968, ended when two Canadians crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia. The first, in 1873, saw the balloon travel just 45 miles. British adventurer Peter Elstob\u2019s planned trip from the Canary Islands to Barbados met with failure in 1958.<\/p>\n

Brown, a former Miss Lexington who was an actress in commercials and a regular on the daytime soap opera \u201cLove is a Many Splendored Thing,\u201d was eager to participate. Brown would chronicle the flight for a book the crew planned to write after the journey.<\/p>\n

As teenagers, she and Henderson had built a raft to sail down the Mississippi River like Huckleberry Finn. \u201cWe were going to have an adventure,\u201d recalled Henderson, adding they only made it as far as a mile down the Kentucky River \u2014 far from the mighty Mississippi \u2014 before abandoning the plan. \u201cPam was just a full-of-life kind of person, eager to try anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Free Life had deadly issues.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The crew was so short of money that they never conducted a test flight and they couldn\u2019t afford an $8,000 quick-release system that would disengage the balloon\u2019s ropes if they needed to be cut loose in an emergency, especially if the balloon came down on rough seas, said Henderson.<\/p>\n

The original balloon pilot, Jim Contos, suddenly quit a month before the journey, citing a lack of safety mechanisms, LIFE magazine reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing about it made sense, neither the balloon nor its clientele,\u201d said British scientist and balloonist Anthony Smith, who wrote \u201cThe Free Life: The Spirit of Courage, Folly and Obsession\u201d in 1990. \u201cRight from the start, it was a venture that would lead inexorably to death. It was all so preordained.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even Brighton, an experienced balloonist taught by Smith who was about to embark on his 100th flight, had doubts.<\/p>\n

He noticed flaws in the balloon\u2019s construction. \u201cI think I could have done better,\u201d he quipped in a radio interview before the flight.\u00a0 In fact, the Sept. 20 launch was delayed for several hours because a three-foot rip had app<\/a>eared in the the balloon\u2019s outer shell. The crew borrowed gaffer tape from a LIFE magazine photographer to patch up the tear and shrugged it off as a minor mishap \u2014 a rip in the inner lining would have been more worrisome, said Henderson \u2014 but it created an uneasy sense of foreboding, according to reports.<\/p>\n

Unlike hot-air balloons, which rely on onboard burners to heat the air in order to lift the balloon, helium balloons are filled with lighter-than-air gas. However, if helium gets too cold, its buoyancy diminishes. To counter that, there was a secondary system for heating air inside an envelope which surrounded the helium container, a process that would allow the balloon to rise in cold weather.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Free Life hot air balloon takes off in September 1970.<\/span>Genie Chipps Henderson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Later, Mark Semich, the balloon\u2019s designer who had built the vessel in Idaho, told the New York Times the crew had decided not to carry \u201ca drag line\u201d \u2014 a 500 foot cable with 300 pounds of logs tied to the end. The logs were designed to trail in the water at night. After sundown, balloonists drop sand or other ballast from the gondola to reduce weight as their helium becomes heavier. \u201cMy system in effect gives you \u2018recoverable ballast,\u201d Semich said. \u201cYou drag the logs into the water at night, which has the same effect as getting rid of ballast, and during the day they came up out of the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Semich said his concerns about the drag line fell on deaf ears.<\/p>\n

The excitement leading up to the launch was at such a fever pitch in Springs, there was no turning back. \u201cBetter go and chance to luck rather than the dismal certain horror of chosen failure,\u201d said Brighton, a father of two young children who had piloted the balloon that sailed over the Isle of Wight in August 1970 during a rock festival by The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere came a point when they couldn\u2019t stop,\u201d said Henderson. \u201cThey just had to go ahead with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirty hours after its launch on Sept. 21, the Free Life was swept up in a violent storm 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.<\/p>\n

Brighton radioed for search and rescue crews as the balloon rapidly lost altitude: \u201cWe are ditching \u2026 We are 600 feet and descending. \u00a0Signing off. Will try contact after landing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was the final message from the crew at 7:05 pm.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The air-heating system had failed, according to the New York Times.\u00a0Experts believe the crew was then overwhelmed by 20 foot waves and dragged under because the vessel lacked the release mechanism that would have allowed the gondola to be separated from the sinking balloon.<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s family set up a command center in New York City to work with the US and Canadian coast guards, who were initially hampered in their efforts to reach the downed crew because of the ferocity of the storm, according to press accounts.<\/p>\n

After five days, Brown\u2019s sister called psychic Peter Hurkos, who had worked with police in Ann Arbor to help solve the murder of six girls and claimed to have identified Charles Manson as the ringleader in a Los Angeles murder spree in 1969. Hurkos claimed the crew was still alive. The Brown family paid his fee and expenses to fly from Los Angeles to eastern Canada to search for the Free Life.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Free Life hot air ballon beginning its trans-Atlantic trip to Europe.<\/span>The LIFE Picture Collection via<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Henderson accompanied Hurkos to Newfoundland where the Brown family chartered a small plane that flew over the choppy waters of the North Atlantic. After a few days, the search was called off. Hurkos said they were dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody can stand the absolute disappearance without a trace,\u201d said Henderson. \u201cEvery family needs some sort of closure, If they could have found anything, it would have been a comfort to them. But nothing ever washed ashore. It all remains a complete mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Springs there was \u201ctotal disbelief,\u201d said Henderson, who still lives in the hamlet with her husband, Bill Henderson, who runs Pushcart Press, an independent book publisher. \u201cThere was so much positive energy in and around Springs that no one wanted to accept what had happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Free Life disaster remains a charged emotional subject. Decades after the balloon went down, dozens of residents gathered to remember the daring crew who had put Springs on the map. Their reactions at a public meeting moderated by Henderson and sponsored by LTV and the Springs Historical Society in 2015 is shown in Henderson\u2019s film, \u201cThe Free Life 50th Year Tribute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just thought this was the most magical thing,\u201d said Lucia Miller, who was 12 when her father took her and her brother to watch the launch, which took place at her uncle George Miller\u2019s field. \u201cEven later, when we found out what had happened \u2026 for us it was not a loss of innocence. For us what was important was that someone had tried something. \u2026 They had gone up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight years later, the Double Eagle II, a helium balloon similar to the Free Life, successfully crossed the Atlantic, landing near Paris on Aug. 17, 1978, more than 137 hours after setting off from Presque Isle, Maine.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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