Free Life (balloon)

Free Life
Type	Roziere type hot-air / helium balloon
Manufacturer	Mark Semich
Manufactured	1970
Registration	N2079
Owners and operators	Rodney Anderson
Last flight	20 September 1970
Flights	1
Total hours	30
Total distance	ca 500 mi (800 km)
Fate	Crashed / force-landed in the Atlantic, killing all aboard and leaving little identifiable wreckage behind.

Free Life was the name of the ill-fated Rozière balloon (registration N2079) that made the fourth attempt at crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The balloon was launched from East Hampton, New York on 20 September 1970, piloted by Malcolm Brighton, with Rodney Anderson and Pamela Brown on board.

Background

The adventure was thought up by Rodney Anderson and his wife, Pamela Brown. Pamela Brown was the actress daughter of Kentucky politician and attorney John Y. Brown, Sr. and the sister of Kentucky Fried Chicken entrepreneur and future Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown Jr. At age 28, she and her 32-year-old husband, commodities broker Rod Anderson, hoped to break records with the first manned balloon flight across the Atlantic. The couple planned to recoup the cost of the venture by writing a book about their experience. When the pilot whom they had been counting on for the flight withdrew late in the game, the Andersons hired Englishman Malcolm Brighton, 32, whose ascent in the Free Life was to be his 100th - and his last. Malcolm Brighton had built several balloons and became the main builder for the Bristol Belle, the name given to the first modern hot air balloon in Europe.

The balloon

The Free Life attempt was the first use of a Roziere style balloon for an Atlantic attempt, built by Mark Semich, using a combination of helium and hot air. Below the spherical helium gas cell is a conical sleeve where air can be heated by burners in the same way as a normal hot air balloon. By varying the hot air temperature, altitude can be maintained without having to release helium or to drop ballast. The burners are principally used to compensate for the lack of solar heating at night.

Voyage

After four years of planning and postponements, Brighton still had reservations about the balloon and in an interview, in which Brighton was asked what he thought of Free Life, he said

"I think I could have done better."

— Malcolm Brighton, The Free Life: The Spirit of Courage, Folly and Obsession

Even experienced balloonists, to whom Mr. Brighton had confided his plans to pilot Free Life, advised against it.

Launch

Despite this, the balloon was launched from George Sid Miller's pasture on Fireplace Road in Springs, New York on 20 September 1970. The weather was perfect; families picnicked and partied; the giant yellow, white and orange balloon, seven stories tall, was spectacular; spirits were high, and the 1,500 well-wishers seemed to share a sense of participating in something extraordinary, cheering their ascent.

Disaster

Disaster struck 30 hours after launch. A hot-air mechanism designed to maintain the balloon’s altitude at night failed on the second day of the flight. When the balloon encountered a high-altitude cold front and a severe rainstorm, they were forced to ditch in the Atlantic that night, about 600 miles southeast of Newfoundland. On 21 September came the last message from the Free Life. "We are ditching," it said. "We request search and rescue." The balloon went down in stormy seas off Newfoundland. Three Coast Guard cutters, a Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft and six United States Air Force and United States Coast Guard aircraft scoured the area for fourteen days. A few items from the balloon gondola were spotted, but the rescue effort was unsuccessful.

Subsequent attempts

Up to August 1978, ten subsequent transatlantic balloon crossing attempts were made: In February 1974, while making one such attempt, Colonel Thomas Leigh Gatch, Jr. USAR also disappeared in his Light Heart superpressure balloon. Finally, on 17 August 1978, three Americans - Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman crossed the Atlantic by balloon, in the Double Eagle II.

Personal Account of one rescue crew-member

On September 21, 1970, we had a mission flying our USAF Air Rescue HC-130 (four 4700 horsepower turboprops and long range rescue and survival equipment on board) East of the coast of Newfoundland to assist fighter aircraft transiting the North Atlantic to NATO bases in Europe. On our late afternoon return leg to home base at Pease AFB, Portsmouth, NH, Boston Radar asked me on the frequency to attempt to make contact with the balloon crew. The crew had a VHF radio, some food and a case of Champagne on board! I was able to raise the Englishman off the coast of Nova Scotia. I asked him how it was going and he replied, "We are doing fine, however, we are a free gas balloon now, since we lost our burner during the night; but we are maintaining about 7,000 feet of altitude". I advised him of the potentially bad weather ahead of him on his flight, wished them good luck, and went back over on frequency to report to Boston Center what I had heard. After we reached Pease and had shut down the engines, I went into our Operations offices and told our air rescue alert crew to "get ready; you will be going out tonight!" You see the Atlantic is a big ocean; bigger than you can imagine unless you have experienced it in a boat or flying at 500 feet searching for lost souls. And, we had, just prior to contacting the Englishman, crossed a weather front at 20,000 feet with 70MPH surface winds and 30 foot wave swells on the water surface! Think: Perfect Storm!

— HC-130 crew-member, crew-member flight log

Search

The Next day, September 22, 1970, I, and my crew of 14 joined a multi-aircraft fleet of US Air Force, Coast Guard, and Canadian Forces, searching the North Atlantic off the coast of Nova Scotia using the Coast Guard drift tables for that section of the Atlantic. Guided by our Loran A and the skill of our navigators, we droned on at 500 to 1000 feet above the water for two weeks scanning every inch and mile of targeted ocean. We crew rested at Torbay, Newfoundland; and, personally, with my crew flying over 45 hours total, we (and all other aircraft) never found a piece of the balloon; nor experienced any sighting of the three lost passengers. To my knowledge, nothing ever washed up on the shores anywhere in Europe; not even a bottle of Champagne! The Atlantic is a big ocean and the average person cannot comprehend just how dangerous it can be to try to cross it, even with the best of equipment and the utmost of training; and in perfect weather.

— HC-130 crew-member, crew-member flight log

Tributes

In October 1972 Pamela Brown was memorialized by the opening of the Pamela Brown Auditorium, the first and largest theater in the newly built Actor's Theatre of Louisville complex.

Journalist Pamela Brown (born 1983), who is John Y. Brown Jr.'s daughter, is named after her aunt.

The Free Life: The Spirit of Courage, Folly and Obsession

A book commemorating the attempt was written in 1994 by Anthony Smith, noted science and travel writer, explorer, and lighter-than-air enthusiast. Entitled “The Free Life: The Spirit of Courage, Folly and Obsession”, the book was awarded the W.W. Norton & Co. thirteenth Annual Editors' Book Award. Anthony Smith was not at the launch of the balloon in 1970, but he had taught Brighton to fly, and he had flown with him more frequently than anyone else.