Algerian Adventure

For every balloon flight story is there an equally compelling chase crew story. The flight of the Virgin Global Challenger was no exception. Balloon Life spoke with Bruce Erickson, Reno, Nevada about what went on behind the scenes in Morocco and Algeria. Bruce was in charge of the preparation in Marrakech and recovery should the flight land early.

While Richard Branson, Per Lindstrand, and Alex Ritchie were recounting their flight for the press back in London, the real work was just beginning. Following is part of the conversation Balloon Life had with Bruce about what happened behind the scenes in Morocco and Algeria. Editor

Balloon Life: How did you become involved with the Virgin Global Challenger flight?
Bruce Erickson: I was on the ground support team for Earthwinds here in Reno, Nevada. I was on every launch that we did at Stead airport. I was in charge of all the heavy equipment, lights, generators and so forth. I am a general contractor here in town, I build houses. I thought that it was very fascinating to be part of a team that was endeavoring to fly around the world. It was the first real challenge. It was an exciting period. We had about 150 volunteers that would show up within six hours if you needed them by just making a phone call. Everybody would assemble; it was a magnificent effort.

John Ackroyd was the designer of all of the capsule equipment, all of the systems that went into Earthwinds. John went over to work for Per Lindstrand at Lindstrand Balloons. He mentioned to Per about us and our endeavors. Of course we had told John to let Per know that we'd love to be on his team. In September, 1995 Per Lindstrand flew to Reno and spent the day with Koh Murai and I. He asked us to be a part of the team.

We ultimately ended up going over to England in January, 1996 to visit the factory where they were frantically working on the capsule. At that point there was a concrete pad to be poured down in Marrakech. I was in the factory all of about three hours when Per walked up to me and said, "See all this paperwork? Read it on the airplane. You will be catching a flight in an hour and a half up in Manchester and you have a nine o'clock meeting tomorrow morning with Colonel Achaoui the liaison officer at the Royal Moroccan Air Force Base in Marrakech. Good luck." And I was whisked out of there in a taxi and sent to Marrakech. That was the beginning of the end. Last summer Per Lindstrand did ask me to be in charge of the launch site and to be the launch master for our latest attempt.

Marrakech was quite interesting. I had a lot of concrete to pour. We had changed the entire launch scenario. Our original launch plans were dumped and we came up with a better scenario to use 16 ground anchored winches to inflate the balloon vertically because it is such a big balloon. My job was to get all the ground anchorage poured in to fit the winches and pour a 65 meter long by 5 meter wide strip from a paved apron at the airbase. This way we could inflate the balloon, raise it up high, tow the capsule underneath the balloon and then attach it to the balloon while it was overhead.

Perhaps the most interesting part of preparing the balloon for flight was bringing the envelope out. At 200 feet in length it took 120 people carry it out safari style. I bought poles locally and the base commander supplied the troops.

BL: Once the balloon was launched what was your assignment?
BE: My job was to stay on after the launch to be prepared to come and get them if they did go down. I was to stay in Marrakech at least four days, until they cleared the Mediterranean. At that point I was to go up to London and stand by at the control center. We actually had about four people still left in Marrakech after the launch.

BL: When did you get word that the flight would end early?
BE: I got the phone call about two-thirty in the morning. I woke up Colonel Achaoui, who was our liaison officer with the Moroccan Air Force. He in turn woke up Colonel Mouche, the commandant of the Air Force base. Then we notified the National gendarmerie up in Rabat because, at that time they were flying parallel with the east-west border with Algeria and Morocco. There was a possibility that they might have landed in Morocco and we wanted to be prepared to go get them. When they landed they were actually a good 150 miles into Algeria. They landed just south a little town named Brazina.

It took five days before we got clearance to come into the country. The chase plane flew us up to Oran to clear customs.

Assuming that we had full cooperation of the government, and we had the British Ambassador doing our dealings in Algeria, we assumed things would be reasonably swift and clean when we went through there. In fact, they immediately charged us $1,125 as a landing fee for the Citation jet. Then it took them an hour and a half to clear us through customs. They really didn't understand the fact that we weren't there on a visit and that all the tether ropes, straps, slings, and stuff in the jet were to bring back a capsule.

Finally we received full clearance and flew into Mecheria 200 miles south. We were greeted by the base commander. The commander had met Terri, the official photographer, when Richard, Per, and Alex flew home. So we were greeted by a friendly face.

A helicopter flew in to transport us to the landing site. A Mil 7171 they call it, which is a Russian gunship. It was loaded with 80 rockets. They were all full and live. We had a machine gun in the back with a door gunner. Needless to say we were all a little nervous flying out over the countryside.

It was tremendously exciting to see the country. It was so different than Morocco. The area was filled with Nomads and their tents, sheep, in the middle of nowhere.

As we flew out we ran into a sand storm so we had to turn back. At this point the base commander had three Toyota 4x4s with armed men waiting for us. These armed men, as it turned out, were part of the militia that belonged to the Wali. The Wali is the governor of that part of Algeria. The Wali of this providence lived in Naama. They were all carrying AK-47s and machine guns. They promptly drove us 30 kilometers down to Naama. They took us into this high-walled residence across the street from the Wali's home. This is where guests of state would stay for the night. We went upstairs into these bedrooms. They brought us fresh soap and shaver, shaving foam, new tooth brush, new toothpaste but, you were afraid to set it down on anything. I am not sure that they changed the sheets more than once a year. It was okay. It was comfortable. In the bathroom you didn't want to touch anything, it was serviceable. They also brought in bottled water and some fruit.

At six o'clock sharp we had to be across the street at the Wali's for dinner. It is Ramadan, which is a very heavy duty Muslin holiday. During Ramadan Muslims do not eat, drink, or smoke during the day. Not even water from sun up to sun down. At sun down, exactly, we can hear the crier at the local mosque and they are yelling out their prayers. And everybody dives into their food. We had to be there at precisely six o'clock so at 6:05 we could eat.

We had a lovely three course meal in the Wali's home. They did park their guns over in the corner. They kept an armed guard around the outside of the house. I guess this is standard procedure for the Wali.

The next morning we got up and were whisked back. They took us in three separate vehicles so any saboteurs can't get all of us at one time. They put two of us in each vehicle and they would drive like a bat-out-of-hell back up to the Air Force base. We got back in the helicopter, but it was raining. When we got out to the mountains we couldn't get over because the ceiling was too low. So we came back.

At that point the commandant of the base really had to get to work because it took about an hour to an hour and a half before six vehicles showed up filled with army, gendarmes, and special forces, and, of course, the Wali's militia.

We headed out, cross-country on a natural gas pipeline road that was just a few years old so it was in pretty good shape. It was raining and this was a dirt road. We got bogged down a couple of times. One of the jeeps went off the road and they had to tow him out. It took two and a half hours to get to the capsule. Beautiful countryside.

As we went along, at each high point, any ridge that we crossed there was always another 4x4 waiting for us with several armed men keeping guard and looking out over the valleys. As soon as we passed them we would honk our horns. They would jump into their vehicles and join us. So by the time got to the capsule there was 12 vehicles in line. It was quite an expedition.

When we got to the capsule, much to our amazement, there was a 35-ton crane sitting out there in the middle of nowhere and a flat bed tank hauler and another flat bed truck. They had already loaded the capsule on the flat bed. This was exactly what we had not wanted them to do because we still had 10,000 pounds of propane hanging off the sides of this capsule. The capsule was designed for lift not for compression. They didn't use our lift points, so we are not real sure exactly how they got it up there.

We immediately went right to work in the rain and started bleeding off the propane. There was a 30 knot wind so we just disconnected all the hoses off the fuel ring and just tie wrapped it pointing straight up and just started blowing propane. We asked everybody not to smoke down wind. The governors aide and the Mayor of Brazina came up to me and asked a bunch of questions about what we were going to do next and where we were headed and how we were going to get the capsule out. Then they said, "And by the way, before you leave tonight, of course, you have got to stop at the Mayor's house and have dinner."

After we got the equipment out to a road they put us in different vehicles that belonged to the Mayor this time. We left guards with the capsule and headed north up into Brazina about 15 kilometers. We pulled into this little ramshackle town, very poor town, very dismal at best.

We went inside the Mayor's house. There are probably 15 of us in there, six of our crew members as well as the Mayor's assistant and the gendarmes with their guns under their arm pits. The machine guns were, of course, all stacked over in the corner.

After we had our dates and milk two men brought in a big platter with a whole sheep on it that had been baked in our honor, including the head, the whole nine yards. The gentleman next to me immediately tore the head off and offered me the cheeks and the tongue because that is quite a delicacy. I passed. The next guy they offered the brains to.

We all got along really well. We stripped that sheep, we ate every bit of meat that was on it. Then they brought in some dessert. We had some coffee. By then it was getting dark and we had to drive the capsule seven and a half hours.

Going through each little town we worried about overhead powerlines because we hadn't taken the motors off the capsule so it was very tall. We arrived at 2:30 a.m. They drove the capsule on through into the airbase. It was really fun when in the morning when we got to the airbase because they apparently had a bunch of flags across some of the roads in town and they were all draped across the capsule and down behind the truck. You know these little triangular flags.

The next day we took apart the capsule, took the avionics out, took the engines off, the burners off, bled all the residual propane out, and then sliced up the balloon. The balloon itself was shot because when they jettisoned the balloon it landed on a barbed wire fence. Probably the only barbed wire fence that we saw in a hundred miles. It was shredded beyond belief. So we spread it out on the tarmac at the air force base. and cut it up into usable pieces as car covers or awnings, or tarps, or whatever. Probably the most expensive tarps in the world. I believe that was approximately a $400,000 dollar envelope.

We hired a Russian cargo plane to haul the capsule back to England.

BL: Other than the fact you had 24 hours to do 72 hours worth of work, is there anything else that you would change about the launch?
BE: I think that is pretty much the key, giving us a little more time to think about things. Of course now we have one launch under our belt, I think the next launch will go quite swimmingly. Be as smooth as silk. I think everybody knows their job now. Everybody knows what to look for. Barring any new systems onboard the capsule we will be in great shape.