Rosie O’Grady Pulls Balloon Race Hat Trick

Veteran balloonist Joe Kittinger won the 33rd annual Gordon Bennett Balloon Race on Monday, after he and his co-pilot, Sherry Reed of Orlando, Fla., landed their red-and-yellow craft on the Nevada desert, 266 miles from where it was launched in Palm Springs on Saturday.

“Unofficially, it was the shortest trip in the history of the race,” said race spokesman C. Jonathan Bryan. Asked if there had been problems with wind currents, he answered, “No, because there weren’t any.”

Last year, Kittinger’s balloon, called the Rosie O’Grady, traveled 1,002 miles in the race and wound up in Hobart, Okla. The balloonists themselves were out of reach in the desert on Monday.

It is the third consecutive win for Kittinger and the Rosie O’Grady. The trophy, designed by Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad, will be given to Kittinger and a new trophy will be crafted for next year’s race. It is the fourth time in the history of the race that the trophy has been retired.

Kittinger won the race after edging out the front-runner, a great white balloon called California Grape.

The Grape, piloted by Austrian airline pilot Josef Starkbaum and co-pilot Helmut Kocar, opted to land at 6:07 p.m. Sunday near Lathrop Wells, Nev., instead of proceeding over the 3-million-acre Nellis Air Force Base at night, Bryan said. Dead ahead on the map was an area marked “gunnery range area number 4806.”

“They do simulated dog-fighting in that area and teach pilots from all over the country how to react to the Soviet threat,” said Capt. Sue Shippy, chief of media relations for the base. “There could be a danger there of ground fire or of a midair collision.”

However, Bryan said, it was believed that the Grape’s pilots opted to set down because they were low on ballast and fuel. He said it was also believed that they decided against seeking permission to cross the base because they believed they had already won the race.

But, Kittinger, an Air Force pilot for 29 years until his retirement in 1978, decided to cross the base anyway--apparently without asking first.

Restricted Area

“He crossed without permission,” Shippy said. “He did have some communication with our air traffic controller and he did cross restricted airspace. He gave some indication that his balloon might be in trouble. But he did not seek permission.”

Trouble or no, wind currents picked up during the night, and the Rosie O’Grady traveled as far in its last 10 hours as it had in the previous 39, Bryan estimated. When the balloon landed in an unrestricted part of the base about 100 miles north of Las Vegas, Bryan said, it had been aloft 49 hours.

The prize is only the most recent of many for Kittinger, who manages the Rosie O’Grady Flying Circus, an airborne performing group based in Orlando, Fla. Last September, Kittinger made the second longest balloon flight in history, when he crossed the Atlantic on a solo flight from Maine to Italy in 84 hours. The flight was 3,544 miles.

Altitude Records

He also holds several ballooning and altitude records, including the world record for parachute jumping from the highest altitude. He established that record on Aug. 16, 1960, when he took a balloon up to 102,800 feet, then jumped from the gondola in a pressurized suit. He was in a free fall for more than four minutes before his parachute opened automatically.

The Gordon Bennett Balloon Race, the first organized international balloon competition, was started in 1906 by the publisher of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett. It was staged annually until 1938, when it was interrupted by World War II. The race was started again in 1979.