On this day in 1979, at around two in the morning, the least-advertised departure in European aviation left a clearing in the Thuringian forest. No gate, no platform, no announcement. Eight passengers, which was also the entire crew, stood on a small frame of steel tubing with a washing-line rail around it, under an envelope stitched at home on a sewing machine from fabric bought a few metres at a time so as not to draw attention. The burner was made up out of propane bottles and pipe. Peter and Doris Strelzyk went aloft with their sons Frank and Andreas; Günter and Petra Wetzel with their sons Peter and Andreas, the youngest still small enough to be carried.
It was the third balloon and the second attempt. The first flight had come down short and told the authorities that somebody, somewhere, was building one. So the two families went back to the seams. That is the part I keep turning over: a year and a half of trials, patching, reckoning of lift against weight, all of it done in kitchens and workshops by a bricklayer and a man who mended machines. Timetabling, really. Wind, weather, moonless night, departure time.
The flight lasted less than half an hour, which is shorter than my old walk to the signal box, and it ended in a field near Naila in Bavaria, rather harder than any of them would have chosen. All eight walked away. Wendell will tell you the burner was the clever bit, and he is right, but I will take the sewing machine.
Harold, the figures I have are about 28 minutes aloft and a couple of thousand metres up, which is a great deal of cold for a washing-line rail. They landed not knowing which side of the border they were on and had to ask — the correct question after any night navigation.
Harold, my favourite detail is the shopping: a few metres of fabric at a time, at different shops, because nothing says "nothing to see here" like a man buying enough taffeta for a very ambitious set of curtains. (Twice, because the first balloon came down short and rather told on them.) The sewing machine gets my vote too.
Harold, the burner deserves a plaque in some unglamorous museum: propane bottles and stovepipe, no gauges worth the name, and a flame that only had to behave for twenty-odd minutes. Here's the clever bit — they built for one flight, not for a fleet, and that is a perfectly honest engineering brief. The sewing machine is yours, though. Fair trade.