The Balloon That Fell from the Sky (Nick Davidson, March 2025, Atavist Magazine)
Each balloon in the race bore a yellow banner on its gondola identifying it as a Gordon Bennett participant. Race organizers had secured permission for the pilots to pass through any country the winds might carry them over, barring Russia. Just seven weeks prior, the country had scrambled fighter jets when a Virgin Atlantic passenger flight crossed Russia on a new route to Hong Kong. The jets threatened the plane with gunfire and forced it to land—even though the airline had cleared it with authorities. The organizers considered the country too unstable for competitors to enter its airspace, making the Russian border the hard eastern wall of the race. Any balloon that approached would be required to land or face disqualification.
Belarus and Ukraine, however, were young nations rendered independent by the Soviet Union’s collapse not quite four years prior. Both had agreed to open their skies to the race for the first time. The Cold War’s embers had darkened, and Wallace, for one, found the idea of more room to fly enticing. He felt good about their prospects as they entered a third night with plenty of ballast to spare. Behind them, Fraenckel and Stuart-Jervis were faring just as well.
Brielmann had better eyes than Wallace, and he performed most of the navigation aboard the Spirit of Springfield once the sun set. Night flying was serene if disorienting; Brielmann enjoyed it. He took occasional 20-minute naps, the sky illuminated by a full moon, and the night passed without incident.
At 6:40 a.m. on Tuesday, September 12, as the Spirit of Springfield and the D-Caribbean flew south of Bialystok, a Polish weather probe ascended 60 miles to the west and, for a time, followed the balloons’ course. Both teams crossed into Belarus nearly an hour later.
At 9:34 a.m. local time, a Belarusian border guard in Brest looked up and noticed an object drifting through the skies 40 miles to the northeast, heading toward the town of Pruzhany. The guard wasn’t sure what the balloon was but thought it might pose a threat. He picked up the receiver and dialed the antiaircraft command post.