Yes, It’s A Balloon Alright

George Santos told me during an oxygen break at the 23,612-foot elevation on our free-climb ascent of Kilimanjaro, or Fujiyama (Fugaku to gamers), I forget which, “It’s not the lie that gets you,” he then saved a koala from falling into a crevasse before adding, while lighting up a Lucky Strike (our corporate sponsor), “It’s the cover-up.” I let him finish the climb alone, because that statement added too much weight to my already overly ladened conscience. Most guilt lingers from dumb things I’ve performed in my half-century in aviation. So far.

Like in 1975, when I tried to land a Grumman TR-2 (not as macho as it sounds) on Runway 8 at Honolulu International Airport instead of the assigned 4 Left … or Right, I forget. Didn’t matter; I was bore-sighted for the big number 8, despite having acknowledged the other runway. Must’ve been a slow traffic day, because the controller waited until the last second to approve my free-form runway choice, “Hey, Grumman, I said, 4 Left (or Right, whatever)!” This was back when little airplanes mixed with 747s in the polyglot world of international ops and wake turbulence. As a low-time private pilot, I routinely displayed minimal grasp of ATC English. Probably why I became an air traffic controller four years later. Nowadays, the FAA requires flight instructors to verify that students can speak, read and kinda understand English before approving a student pilot application on IACRA, which is an acronym of vaguely English-based words stitched together to confuse pilots and CFIs.

At the time of my runway “incident,” I was an Army E-5 with almost three years of butt-chewings in my 201 file from doing countless stupid things. (Someday, I’ll confess to my first time shooting an M-16, and the drill instructor, who explained with avuncular sensitivity, that I’d “missed the whole (darn) target!”) As for the almost runway incursion, tower controllers are supposed to catch pilot mistakes—a ponderous list of creativity—before tragedy occurs. Numerous highish-tech ways to achieve this exist, but the best method remains looking out the many windows in the tower cab while scanning for unforeseen trouble; much as pilots should.

In my tower career, effortless scanning saved me—and pilots—from embarrassing events, including gear-up landings. One day I missed a scan, and a Beech Baron slid down the runway, curling back its props. In civilian ATC it’s not controllers’ responsibility to verify pilots put the wheels down. Still, it’s a professional courtesy, and I felt like a mook after the unprofessional lapse. In the Honolulu case, where I was lined up on the wrong runway, I now wonder if the controllers were placing bets on how low I’d descend before going around. (FAA click here to express umbrage: paulberge.com.)

That was long ago. Recently, the world is agog over the Chinese balloon lingering at FL500+ with what reporters call “surveillance equipment” dangling beneath. The NAS (National Airspace System or everything up there) is facing yet another threat of inflated hysteria, only this one’s real … in some minds. Speculation says the balloon over Montana (the state, not Hanna) is taking photos of … I don’t know, maybe a secret episode of Yellowstone. Chinese officials, or at least those on Facebook, claim it’s an errant weather balloon. Personally, in an age of intergalactic nuclear weapons in the hands of almost everyone, multilateral finger-pointing over balloons is refreshing. But as Charles Dudley Warner said to Mark Twain in 1897, “Everyone complains about weather balloons but nobody does anything about them.” Until now, when everyone wants to take a pot shot at this one.

Since the American Civil War, balloonists have striven to prove usefulness. And they’ve succeeded with weather and reveal party balloons, thousands of which float through the NAS like errant flatulence. And yes, in 1794 France’s Corps d' Aerostiers thumbed noses at enemy troops from balloons. The Aerostier pilots were motivated to succeed by their overseers, the—not making this up—Committee On Public Safety. While that sounds like a joint FAA/AOPA runway incursion focus group, it was the name of the unit that enforced guillotine justice. Given the mindset, it was a short hop from political cleansing to weaponizing gas bags. And speaking of gas, the civil war bags weren’t filled with hot air. Instead, iron filings were mixed with sulfuric acid to produce hydrogen gas, which is lighter than air and a better lifter than helium, although not nearly as funny at parties.

Formed in 1861, the Union Army’s Balloon Corps, under Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, lacked the elan of Corps d' Aerostiers. It was a civilian contract unit, because the Army knew that if left to a bunch of 20-something E-4s and 5s, ballooning would’ve produced more hijinks than strategic value. The first successfully ballyhooed Balloon Corps aerostat to see combat—and that’s literally what the aeronaut onboard did, observed troop movements and telegraphed observations to generals below—was at the First Battle of Bull Run. With amazing foresight, the balloon was named Enterprise, after Captain Kirk’s Star Trek vessel. Wikipedia won’t verify that. The Civil War’s Enterprise passed its name to a 1930s Goodyear L-class blimp, which served in World War II.

Balloons secured Hollywood glam in World War I as all sides dotted battlefield skies with hydrogen-filled targets for American ace 2^nd Lt Frank Luke to bust. Luke’s career was short lived (July-September 1918), although it did earn him a Congressional Medal of Honor and his name on Luke Air Force Base stationary and tagged as the lead character in Star Wars.

So, as newscasters foam over the errant balloon, I salute the Chinese for turning back the clock, after having invented it millennia ago. In a world of high-tech everything, everything becomes passe, jejune, or other Gallic put-downs, and we can easily overlook the basics of a harmless prank. I say: Vive le Balloon!

Next week on Rhyming Aviation History: North Korea swaps its ICBMs for gaily festooned Happy Peoples Balloon Bombers.