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Congressional Gold Medal Recipients
Ben Abruzzo,
Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman
1978 -- First Balloon to Cross the Atlantic: Double Eagle II, a helium balloon carrying
Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and
Larry Newman, becomes the first balloon to cross the Atlantic. A new duration record is set with a flight time of 137 hours and covered 3,107.61 miles.
Double Eagle II Ben Abruzzo b. Rockford, Winnebago, Illinois, 9 June 1930
d. Albuquerque, Bernalillo, New Mexico, 11 February 1985
Maxie Anderson born Max Leroy Anderson
b. Sayre, Beckham, Oklahoma, 10 September 1934
d. near Bad Brckenau, Lower Franconia, Bavaria, West Germany [now Germany], 27 June 1983
Larry Newman b.
Wednesday, 13 June 1979
An Act To authorize the President of the United States to present on behalf of the Congress a specially struck gold medal to Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That (a) the President of the United States is hereby authorized to present, on behalf of the Congress, to Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman, transatlantic balloonists, one gold medal each of appropriate design in recognition of their distinguished feat as aviation pioneers. For such purpose, the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and directed to cause to be struck three gold medals with suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions to be determined by the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with the concurrence of the Commission on Fine Arts, subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury. There are authorized to be appropriated not to exceed $45,000 to carry out the provisions of this subsection. (b) The Secretary of the Treasury may cause duplicates in bronze of such medal to be coined and sold under such regulations as he may prescribe, at a price sufficient to cover the cost thereof, including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, overhead expenses, and the cost of the gold medals, and the appropriation used for carrying out the provisions of this subsection shall be reimbursed out of the proceeds of such sale. (c) The medals provided for in this section are national medals for the purpose of section 3551 of the Revised Statutes (31 U.S.C. 368).
93 Stat. 45 Double Eagle II
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Gondola Dimensions
Length |
4.57 m (15 ft.) |
Width |
2.13 m (7 ft.) |
Height |
1.37 m (4 ft. 6 in.) |
Weight |
345 kg (760 lb.) empty |
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The flight of the Double Eagle II balloon came to a safe and successful end in a wheat field near Miserey, France, about sixty miles northwest of Paris, on August 17, 1978. The event closed a chapter in the history of flight that had begun when the first human beings ventured aloft in 1783. At long last, a crew of balloonists had crossed the Atlantic Ocean. In 1844, the American writer Edgar Allen Poe had captured the attention of the public with his "Balloon Hoax," an article in the New York Sun claiming that balloonist Monck Mason had flown the Atlantic. The earliest-known serious attempt at a crossing came in 1873, when the well-known Civil War balloonist John Wise, sponsored by the newspaper Daily Graphic, took off from New York City but was forced down by a storm over the Catskills. The old dream was reborn in the 1970s, as a new generation of aeronauts sought fresh challenges. Flying a balloon across the ocean was not something to be undertaken lightly, however. Before the success of Double Eagle II, seventeen attempts had been made to cross the Atlantic by balloon with the loss of seven lives. Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman, all of Albuquerque, New Mexico, made the 3,100-mile flight from Presque Isle, Maine, to Miserey in 137 hours, 6 minutes. Lift-off had been at 8 42 p m on August 11. Their helium-filled balloon, the Double Eagle II, was 112 feet high, 65 feet in diameter, and had a capacity of 160,000 cubic feet. Abruzzo, Anderson, and Newman rode in a 15 x 7 x 4 1/2-foot gondola named The Spirit of Albuquerque, equipped with a twin-hulled catamaran that would float in case of an emergency water landing. Also carried along by Newman, a hang-glider pilot and owner of a hang-glider manufacturing company, was a glider which was attached to the gondola with the idea of using it for the descent at the end of the flight. It had to be cast off to lighten the balloon, however, before the crew reached their goal. The most recent attempt before that of the Double Eagle II was in July 1978 by two Englishmen who took off from Saint John's, Newfoundland. They fell short of their goal, Brest, France, by only 103 miles. Abruzzo and Anderson themselves had made an attempt in September 1977, but were forced down by bad weather off the coast of Iceland. Their balloon for that try was the Double Eagle. The Double Eagle II was constructed by Ed Yost of Tea, South Dakota, who had himself made a trans-Atlantic attempt in 1976. The gondola was equipped with computers for navigation and radio gear for communication with land monitoring stations. It carried a VHF radio, two single sideband HF radios, an ADF beacon transmitter, an amateur band radio, a maritime radio, and a hookup to the Nimbus 6 satellite, which transmitted their latitude and longitude to Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Officially, the Atlantic crossing was attained at 10:02 p.m. on August 16, when the Double Eagle II crossed the Irish coast. But the goal of the three pilots was le Bourget airfield near Paris, where Lindbergh had landed. However, late in the afternoon of the 17th, with ballast low and daylight fading, the pilots reached the decision to land in the French province of Normandy. Thus at 7:48 p.m. they came down in a wheat field near Miserey and were immediately surrounded by crowds who had been following the balloon's path. During the crossing, the altitude of the Double Eagle II had varied from a heart-stopping low point of 3,500 feet on August 13 when clouds screened the sun and cooled the gas, causing the balloon to sink, to a high point of 24,950 feet on August 16. The success of the Double Eagle II, after so many others had failed, was not simply a matter of luck. It can be attributed to a combination of twentieth-century technology, better understanding of weather patterns, and the skill and experience of a crew who achieved one of the oldest goals in flying. Copyright 1998-2000 National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
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