About Just Wind

Two pioneer balloonists - Tom Gatch in 1974 and Larry Newman in the early 1990s - led projects that could have landed them in the record books. Both gained a huge amount of publicity in their day, and captured the imaginations of millions of followers.

From a historical perspective, the two stories have many parallels:

• Tom Gatch was trying to be the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean by balloon. Larry Newman’s team succeeded in doing so four years after Gatch failed. Newman was trying to be the first to circumnavigate the globe by balloon - a mission accomplished four years after he failed.
• Gatch and Newman as aviation pioneers explored and employed new technology in attempting to accomplish what no one had done.
• Gatch and Newman were the first - and so far the only - balloonists to use pressurized balloons in stratospheric flight.
• Gatch and Newman each employed an unusual array of multiple balloons in their systems. Gatch ascended under a cluster of 10 super-pressure helium balloons. Newman tried a unique double balloon system: a huge helium balloon above the capsule for lifting and a massive pressurized balloon suspended below, for creating ballast.
• Gatch and Newman, though possessed of sharply different personalities, each held close the vision of how they would conduct their flight.
• Gatch and Newman each flew inside sealed capsules into the stratosphere - seven miles high. Both pilots largely built and modified their own capsules.
• Each used balloons built by the same manufacturer, and each suffered a catastrophic failure while aloft.

Many differences distinguished the two men and their projects.

• In the first book, a determined, self-financed and self-reliant Tom Gatch tries to conquer the Atlantic Ocean alone by balloon. He makes it halfway across before disappearing without a trace. The Department of Defense mounts a massive but futile search for him in mid-ocean. In the years since, people asked, “What happened to him? Why did he do it?”
• In the second book, Larry Newman leads the most expensive and heavily marketed balloon expedition ever undertaken, attempting to become the first fly a balloon around the world non-stop. He tries three times, each time with a different crew.
• Tom Gatch spent about $60,000 of his own savings. On this shoestring budget, he neither sought nor accepted sponsorship, and he remained free of outside influence. Larry Newman raised more than $9 million from world-class corporate sponsors, using little of his own money.
• Gatch shied from publicity until his flight was ready to begin. Newman sought publicity for every event leading up to launch.
• Gatch relied on a tiny cadre of helpers and advisors, no more than five altogether, none paid. Newman recruited, used and dismissed hundreds of volunteers and paid staff.
• Gatch, an Army Reserve colonel, had little experience as an aviator, having logged only 23 hours as a balloonist. Newman, with no military experience, had been flying since he was seven years old, had logged thousands of hours in the air in dozens of different kinds of aircraft, and had already won a Congressional Gold Medal for Aviation.
• Gatch and Newman came from vastly different social settings and from different parts of the United States.
• Gatch and Newman each believed that pressurized scientific balloons would stabilize their flights at a fixed height. By using so-called super-pressure balloons, each pilot hoped he could eliminate the traditional balloonist’s challenge of balancing and managing ballast and gas resources.

Gatch and Newman artifacts remained in museum displays for a while - at the National Air & Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute, for instance - but ultimately their names became only footnotes in aviation history.

Only by the most remarkable of coincidences did I come to know each man. Tom Gatch and Larry Newman each invited me to publicize their projects. During 1973-74, I worked as a volunteer media director for Gatch’s Project Light Heart. From 1990-93, I worked as the media director for Larry Newman’s Earthwinds Transglobal Flight.

Tom Gatch was my friend, an intelligent, educated and gracious man who helped me earn my pilot license. He flew with me on his last flight before taking off across the ocean. Although I never flew with Larry Newman, we spent countless hours together over several years working as a team.

Over the years, many people have asked: What motivated these men? How did they carry out their work? What became of their efforts? This book is intended to help answer those questions.