I was on the search plane a DC-6 out of Fort Lauderdale International, I was hired as an observer along with about 10 others I also was given the job of part time F/A. We spent 14 hr days or more searching with the Canadian Coast Guard and dropping sonar bouys out of the plane when we spotted anything that might be from the balloon, I think they found the O-ring and a Portuguese fishing net. We were there for about a week and a half in St.Johns and Gander. The weather at the time of our search was poor visibility and I remember the seas were breaking over the Coast Guard Cutter as if it were a toy.
In 1975, Bob Sparks attempted to cross the Atlantic in his balloon, Odyssey. It would have been a successful flight, but Spark’s crew chief wanted to become famous, too, and clung to a drop line when Odyssey lifted off, unobserved in the darkness. The crew chief had rigged the balloon so Sparks could not deflate the balloon when the crew chief called up to Bob for help getting into the basket. Bob had to decide whether to save the crew chief and help him up into the gondola, or save the record attempt and cut the line. He corrected the sabotage to the rigging and aborted the flight, never to speak to the crew chief, nor attempt a transAtlantic flight, again.
Wow, to have their burner fail and to still continue with the mission is just crazy. They were doomed as soon as that burner failed and they should have called in a mayday that way an aircraft could have easily found them before they went into the ocean. It's crazy that they waited until they were only 60 feet above the water to call in a mayday. They made mistake after mistake and unfortunately it cost them their lives.
They may as well have played Russian Roulette, with just one chamber empty. At least they only forfeited their own lives, rather than adding would-be rescuers, as sometimes happens with maniacs and their dumb "Let's get famous!" ideas.
Yeah, it makes no logical sense. I don’t know why anyone would do this, especially because they knew the burner had issues. They were doomed to fail and just threw caution to the wind.
The biggest fault was lack of preparation and lack of experience in the particular balloon. The sensible thing to have done would have been a test flight over land, say from the US west coast to the east. This would have revealed any weaknesses without the obvious risks of flying over water. And such a flight could, if it had been successful, been used for publicity to raise more money for the trans-Atlantic flight.
Definitely a case of 'Get-there-itis'. A study was made of this phenomenon using the BEA database for accidents which occurred in France to French or foreign aircraft in the period 1991 - 1996. Sixty accidents corresponding to these "fascination with the objective" criteria were noted. Among these accidents, forty were fatal and caused the deaths of one hundred people.
Great account.....what I like is no punches pulled...if people make mistakes, you mention it....we learn from our mistakes; or should. RIP these young adventurers but you can't put a wise head on young shoulders.
Great job, learned a lot about this! It would be nice to see a video about Thomas Gatch. Another fatal balloon voyage around the same time as the Free Life.
Yes, his is another very interesting story, and hopefully I'll be able to create an episode on that story soon...the problem is there are few good pictures of Tom Gatch / the Light Heart online, but I've reached out to someone who documented his story to try and get additional imagery.
The problem with hot air balloons, is any “safety” features, mean extra equipment, which means extra weight, which means extra fuel, which means extra costs. That being said, it’s safe to assume that many balloonists might skimp on safety to achieve maximum profit.
A good account, will you be covering the 1974 'Light Heart' trans-atlantic balloon crossing attempt. Like this attempt it ended with the dissapearance of the crew, but the circumstances and design of the balloon were different. From what I've read about it, the pilot (Thomas Gatch Jr.) may have suffered from oxygen failure. Certainly the crew of the ship that made the last sighting of the balloon were unable to reach him on radio.
Yes, that's very close on my list and it's always been intriguing to me as well. I recently read a book about it, but part of the challenge of telling the account in video format is that there are very few pictures available of the Light Heart.
You are adept at finding interesting and obscure incidents and relating. them very well. I've never heard of this incident either. Great job. Keep em coming.
The manufacturer of the balloon shares a huge percentage of responsibility. They accepted a huge amount of money for a craft that they knew was inadequate for the trip. It wouldn't have been hard to design a gondola that would have been moderately seaworthy in the event of a ditching. Just make a mold off of, oh I don't know, a boat for example. lay a fiberglass blank up in the mold, de-mold the blank. Cut the blank in half, widen it. Anyone looking at the film can see how dodgy that gondola would have been in the event of a ditching. Oh but don't worry, they already thought of a solution: Hundreds of ping pong balls! That'll work! It's not like they make special bouyancy foam for that exact purpose right?
They did not sort out the "chain of command". It's obvious that "Money" was captain, whereas the experienced ballooner pilot should have been in Command, and called the shots.
what was the point as the Atlantic was first crossed by balloon many years ago, the Graf Zeppelin made 143 successful trans Atlantic crossings and one of the Pacific
While the burner was the number one reason for the failure. I'm curious as to why the gondola failed to float. Buoyancy is a powerful force, and I doubt that the envelope could have pulled it under alone. Especially considering a secondary bag of helium. Ping pong balls have been used for flotation before and since so I suspect that the glue used to attach the balls somehow melted or otherwise destroyed the integrity of the cellulose material making up the balls.
The surface of the North Atlantic, even without storms, is very rough. The wind would have pushed the envelope over on its side, dragging the flimsy gondola across the jagged wave tops and breaking it apart instantly. Then the waves would then have shredded the gossamer envelope in minutes, releasing the helium in seconds, and it’s weight would have dragged what was left of the gondola under, regardless of how many ping pong balls were glued to it. The load ring, the strongest part of the whole craft, was the only piece that was found.
I am curious as to who made the Rozier? As a first model, I would expect that as a simple test it would've had an overland test flight of at least two days to check the functionality of the gas system and burner and also for the pilot to become familiar with the balloon. Also the seaworthiness of the gondola (hardly a conventional basket) should've been tested with all three in it. I would think that it was a bit optimistic to think that they could catch reliable trans-Atlantic winds at and below 10,000'. I was active in the local ballooning fraternity in Australia for a few years and I had a friend who wanted to do similar record setting flights, but when I went into the practicalities of extended endurance, he may've been good on conventional experience, but the costs and risks need generous sponsors.
Builder: Mike Semich; Semco Balloons I had my first lesson in a Semco. Burner was very weak. Deflation mechanism failed upon landing. Fortunately it was a calm evening and we let the balloon cool. My second lesson was NOT in a Semco.
@@tirquin1 Thanks for that up date and additional information. In June of 1993 a rozier was the first balloon to cross Australia covering 3867km. It was not without incident with the two pilots having to discard several heavy items along the way. Only one of the pilots possibly had rozier experience and the other pilot was essentially little more than a student balloonist at the time. I'll keep an eye out for your book but I'm already a few years behind with my reading. Semco Balloons were/are unknown in Australia so I had never heard of them before now.
There was a test flight, the originally pilot, after the test and with other concerns, pulled out of the project. There is a book on the Free Life by Anthony Smith that goes into great detail of what led to The Free Life flight, how we're all guilty on occasion of making bad no fly / fly decisions and what can be learned from that. As for the Australian crossing by John Wallington and Dick Smith, it was a pretty quick crossing with a stand up landing, I've not read anywhere before that they had to dump equipment other than ballast to make it all the way?
Même si j'avais vu cette video en 1992, j'aurais quand même formé ce team belge de la transat Chrysler balloon race. Merci à Alan, Don and Evert. Avec les amerrissages des ballons allemand puis néérlandais, il semblerait que nous ayons eu une météo similaire, mais nous étions mieux préparés! Nous nous souvenons tous avec joie de notre dîner des survivants!
A burner is such a simple thing, how could it have proved finicky even before lift-off? And knowing it was unreliable, why wasn't another carried or a different burner sourced? Definitely reckless behaviour with nobody thinking clearly.
I was on the search plane a DC-6 out of Fort Lauderdale International, I was hired as an observer along with about 10 others I also was given the job of part time F/A. We spent 14 hr days or more searching with the Canadian Coast Guard and dropping sonar bouys out of the plane when we spotted anything that might be from the balloon, I think they found the O-ring and a Portuguese fishing net. We were there for about a week and a half in St.Johns and Gander. The weather at the time of our search was poor visibility and I remember the seas were breaking over the Coast Guard Cutter as if it were a toy.
Excellent story. Thank you for sharing your life experiences.
Such a sad and silly way to go.
How certain where they that the O-ring was part of the balloon? Thanks for sharing!
@@AviationHorrors It had part of the balloon material attached according to what the Coast Guard reported to us on the radio.
Wow, that had to have been something else to experience, thank you for sharing!!
By comparison, even Lawn Chair Larry seemed more careful. The 70s was a wild time of risk taking, wishful thinking, and impractical ideas.
In 1975, Bob Sparks attempted to cross the Atlantic in his balloon, Odyssey. It would have been a successful flight, but Spark’s crew chief wanted to become famous, too, and clung to a drop line when Odyssey lifted off, unobserved in the darkness. The crew chief had rigged the balloon so Sparks could not deflate the balloon when the crew chief called up to Bob for help getting into the basket. Bob had to decide whether to save the crew chief and help him up into the gondola, or save the record attempt and cut the line. He corrected the sabotage to the rigging and aborted the flight, never to speak to the crew chief, nor attempt a transAtlantic flight, again.
Thanks for sharing! Bob Sparks' attempt might be worth a video itself at some point.
@@AviationHorrors
I’d be interested in hearing it!
That's fucked up.
Wow, to have their burner fail and to still continue with the mission is just crazy. They were doomed as soon as that burner failed and they should have called in a mayday that way an aircraft could have easily found them before they went into the ocean. It's crazy that they waited until they were only 60 feet above the water to call in a mayday. They made mistake after mistake and unfortunately it cost them their lives.
They may as well have played Russian Roulette, with just one chamber empty. At least they only forfeited their own lives, rather than adding would-be rescuers, as sometimes happens with maniacs and their dumb "Let's get famous!" ideas.
Yeah, it makes no logical sense. I don’t know why anyone would do this, especially because they knew the burner had issues. They were doomed to fail and just threw caution to the wind.
The biggest fault was lack of preparation and lack of experience in the particular balloon. The sensible thing to have done would have been a test flight over land, say from the US west coast to the east. This would have revealed any weaknesses without the obvious risks of flying over water. And such a flight could, if it had been successful, been used for publicity to raise more money for the trans-Atlantic flight.
Definitely a case of 'Get-there-itis'.
A study was made of this phenomenon using the BEA database for accidents which occurred in France to French or foreign aircraft in the period 1991 - 1996.
Sixty accidents corresponding to these "fascination with the objective" criteria were noted. Among these accidents, forty were fatal and caused the deaths of one hundred people.
Great account.....what I like is no punches pulled...if people make mistakes, you mention it....we learn from our mistakes; or should. RIP these young adventurers but you can't put a wise head on young shoulders.
Great job, learned a lot about this! It would be nice to see a video about Thomas Gatch. Another fatal balloon voyage around the same time as the Free Life.
Yes, his is another very interesting story, and hopefully I'll be able to create an episode on that story soon...the problem is there are few good pictures of Tom Gatch / the Light Heart online, but I've reached out to someone who documented his story to try and get additional imagery.
@@AviationHorrors Wow you certainly delivered! Thanks again for an excellent production (and for tolerating my theorizing)!
The problem with hot air balloons, is any “safety” features, mean extra equipment, which means extra weight, which means extra fuel, which means extra costs.
That being said, it’s safe to assume that many balloonists might skimp on safety to achieve maximum profit.
A good account, will you be covering the 1974 'Light Heart' trans-atlantic balloon crossing attempt. Like this attempt it ended with the dissapearance of the crew, but the circumstances and design of the balloon were different. From what I've read about it, the pilot (Thomas Gatch Jr.) may have suffered from oxygen failure. Certainly the crew of the ship that made the last sighting of the balloon were unable to reach him on radio.
Yes, that's very close on my list and it's always been intriguing to me as well. I recently read a book about it, but part of the challenge of telling the account in video format is that there are very few pictures available of the Light Heart.
You are adept at finding interesting and obscure incidents and relating. them very well. I've never heard of this incident either. Great job. Keep em coming.
The manufacturer of the balloon shares a huge percentage of responsibility. They accepted a huge amount of money for a craft that they knew was inadequate for the trip. It wouldn't have been hard to design a gondola that would have been moderately seaworthy in the event of a ditching. Just make a mold off of, oh I don't know, a boat for example. lay a fiberglass blank up in the mold, de-mold the blank. Cut the blank in half, widen it. Anyone looking at the film can see how dodgy that gondola would have been in the event of a ditching. Oh but don't worry, they already thought of a solution: Hundreds of ping pong balls! That'll work! It's not like they make special bouyancy foam for that exact purpose right?
Plus... Perhaps a backup burner...
They we're in love with, 'The Story' and not, 'The Reality.' The cause of many lives lost, in so many ways to this day!
Excellent presentation of the story which would make a superb movie.
Never heard of this story. Great job delivering it. 🔥👍 I subscribed Getting ready to binge watch the crap out of your vids 😆🤣 ✌️
Superbly told, didn't know about this. Pressure, poor planning, so many things cost them their lives.
They did not sort out the "chain of command". It's obvious that "Money" was captain, whereas the experienced ballooner pilot should have been in Command, and called the shots.
People leaving "death defying" projects like this one makes me think of Susan Hayward & Simon Oakland..."I want to live!".
what was the point as the Atlantic was first crossed by balloon many years ago, the Graf Zeppelin made 143 successful trans Atlantic crossings and one of the Pacific
That was an airship dear.
While the burner was the number one reason for the failure. I'm curious as to why the gondola failed to float. Buoyancy is a powerful force, and I doubt that the envelope could have pulled it under alone. Especially considering a secondary bag of helium. Ping pong balls have been used for flotation before and since so I suspect that the glue used to attach the balls somehow melted or otherwise destroyed the integrity of the cellulose material making up the balls.
The surface of the North Atlantic, even without storms, is very rough. The wind would have pushed the envelope over on its side, dragging the flimsy gondola across the jagged wave tops and breaking it apart instantly. Then the waves would then have shredded the gossamer envelope in minutes, releasing the helium in seconds, and it’s weight would have dragged what was left of the gondola under, regardless of how many ping pong balls were glued to it. The load ring, the strongest part of the whole craft, was the only piece that was found.
You're doing an excellent job on these videos.
This story is crazy. At first, I thought they were in a capsule, but nope.. Cross the ocean in an open basket???? Nuts....
Same thought here, especially as balloon's tend to guide all their rainwater down onto the gondola... what a ride.
Awesome video !
Holy Poor Planning and Execution, Batman!
Even without dialogue, i can see this is going to end sooooo badly.
"GO FEVER" Has doomed so many.
I am curious as to who made the Rozier? As a first model, I would expect that as a simple test it would've had an overland test flight of at least two days to check the functionality of the gas system and burner and also for the pilot to become familiar with the balloon. Also the seaworthiness of the gondola (hardly a conventional basket) should've been tested with all three in it. I would think that it was a bit optimistic to think that they could catch reliable trans-Atlantic winds at and below 10,000'.
I was active in the local ballooning fraternity in Australia for a few years and I had a friend who wanted to do similar record setting flights, but when I went into the practicalities of extended endurance, he may've been good on conventional experience, but the costs and risks need generous sponsors.
Builder: Mike Semich; Semco Balloons I had my first lesson in a Semco. Burner was very weak. Deflation mechanism failed upon landing. Fortunately it was a calm evening and we let the balloon cool. My second lesson was NOT in a Semco.
@@alpintourer His name was Mark Semich. I worked for him in the 70's
@@Beauhogg Yes, I stated that above. Did you know Einer Wheel when you worked there?
@@tirquin1 Thanks for that up date and additional information. In June of 1993 a rozier was the first balloon to cross Australia covering 3867km. It was not without incident with the two pilots having to discard several heavy items along the way. Only one of the pilots possibly had rozier experience and the other pilot was essentially little more than a student balloonist at the time.
I'll keep an eye out for your book but I'm already a few years behind with my reading.
Semco Balloons were/are unknown in Australia so I had never heard of them before now.
There was a test flight, the originally pilot, after the test and with other concerns, pulled out of the project. There is a book on the Free Life by Anthony Smith that goes into great detail of what led to The Free Life flight, how we're all guilty on occasion of making bad no fly / fly decisions and what can be learned from that.
As for the Australian crossing by John Wallington and Dick Smith, it was a pretty quick crossing with a stand up landing, I've not read anywhere before that they had to dump equipment other than ballast to make it all the way?
Great video, thanks
RIP… that magnificent mustache and jumpsuit will live forever in the Great Golden Book up in the sky
In order to save face, they threw away their lives...
Même si j'avais vu cette video en 1992, j'aurais quand même formé ce team belge de la transat Chrysler balloon race. Merci à Alan, Don and Evert. Avec les amerrissages des ballons allemand puis néérlandais, il semblerait que nous ayons eu une météo similaire, mais nous étions mieux préparés! Nous nous souvenons tous avec joie de notre dîner des survivants!
@Gabe yes.
The balloon itself was the issue. A single burner with no redundancy! THAT IB IT SELF, I would have chosen to stay on the ground at that point.
A burner is such a simple thing, how could it have proved finicky even before lift-off? And knowing it was unreliable, why wasn't another carried or a different burner sourced? Definitely reckless behaviour with nobody thinking clearly.
Very interesting video content!
R I P Malcolm ❤ 🎉
_"We have to go, there's no alternative"_ NEVER buy this from anyone -ever!
I need more aviation mystery’s
These videos are great 👍🏻
There’s quite a bit of room reverb in your audio. Might consider getting some sound dampers.
the word fustercluck comes to mind...
Wow! What an insane story!
Desearía poder realizar una película de este caso
I assume in the 1970s the FAA never had any say on such experimental flights ?
Their probably still pondering it...
Wow.........very dumb plan. Darwin award.
Darwin Awards, one each, please...
More like a “Buffoon Ride”
They didn't get far. So sad.
Too late in the year to launch, launch point way too far west, shoddy equipment, poor planning, they had no idea what they were doing.
Sad. This story isn't very well-known. Interesting that the psychic said that a couple of them survived.
Its called telling lies ! Its what they do
An attorney who served in the House of Representatives hired a psychic...
@@kermitwilson I believe it was an astrologer. You'd think he'd have given old Gipper a call and said "Be careful at the Hilton"...
Ask Billionaire Steve Fossett if money makes a difference when taking risks - oops I forgot Steve is dead.
Wow very strange emphasis while your talking but an interesting story
It failed due to poor equipment and over inflated egos
…food for the fishes…
Burner* not heater.
Darwin award?
Utterly nonsensical.