The Gordon Bennett in the United States

By Kim Vesely, for the AIBF Heritage Committee

It was founded by an American -- James Gordon Bennett, Jr. -- but almost everything else about the inaugural race of the most prestigious series in ballooning history had a distinctively French flair.  Even the official name -- Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett -- was French.  Bennett (who lived in France) charged the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world air sports federation chartered in 1905, with running the event.  Today, the FAI is still the governing body for air sports worldwide and is still the sanctioning agency for the Gordon Bennett.  The race began in the shadow of the Louvre, in the historic Tuilières Gardens in the center of Paris.  Two hundred thousand ecstatic Parisians turned out to see the launch.

Yes, just about everything was French except the founder and the winners: U.S. Army Lieutenant Frank Lahm and Henry Hersey of the USA.  Under the rules established by Bennett for his balloon race, as for his races in other sports, the winning team’s home country was afforded the honor of holding the next year’s event.  Therefore, in 1907, the race came to the United States for the first time and was held in St. Louis, MO.

Lahm’s victory got a lot of attention back home, and several officers rushed to get their balloon licenses.  Lahm himself became ill and couldn’t compete, but his co-pilot of the previous year, Henry Hersey, earned his license in time to join the American team.

The race was postponed for two days so the local gas company could empty its lines of its regular fuel and supply a special lightweight lifting gas -- something it had to do on a Sunday.  The hope was that with the help of the lightweight gas and the central location of St. Louis, the balloons could fly long distances.  It worked.

Three American teams, three Germans, two French, and one British team competed (the second British team, which included Charles S. Rolls of Rolls-Royce fame was a no-show).  The home-turf advantage didn’t help the Americans, however -- the best they could manage was 4th.  The race was won by German Oscar Erbslöh, flying with an American co-pilot, Henry Helm Clayton*.  Their flight of 872 miles (1,404 km.) was the 15th longest in the history of the event.  Erbslöh, tragically, died three years later in an airship accident. 

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*This was before the Gordon Bennett rule was established which requires both pilot and co-pilot to be citizens of the country for which they compete.  (The Balloon Fiesta America’s Challenge, however, permits teams of mixed nationality, and several have competed in the event.)    

Edgar Mix’s victory at the 1909 Gordon Bennett brought the race back to the U.S. and to St. Louis in 1910.  This year, the winds were to the north.  The good news is that there’s a lot of land north of St. Louis, making for some very long flights.  Seven of the 10 balloons crossed the Great Lakes and headed into Canada.  The eventual winners, American’s Alan Hawley and Augustus Post, flew 1,172 miles (1888 km.), still the fifth longest Gordon Bennett flight.

The bad news is that a lot of Canada -- especially in 1910 -- was trackless wilderness.  Several teams were lost for days.  One German team landed in Lake Nipising, swam ashore, and was greeted by the local Indians.  Another abandoned their balloon in the wilderness and spent 10 days hiking out.  Their balloon was found three months later by Inuits.  It took nearly as long for the winners to get out word of their whereabouts.  They had a four-day hike from their landing site to a woodcutter’s cabin, and even then were far from civilization.

In 1911, the race moved from St. Louis -- they’d had organizational problems the previous year -- to Kansas City.  The Americans had high hopes of winning a third Gordon Bennett and retiring the Cup.  (The Gordon Bennett Cup is retired any time a nation wins in three consecutive years and a new cup is made.)  But this wasn’t to be the Americans’ year.  Hans Gericke, who had finished second the year before, won the event with co-pilot Otto Duncker.  Their weather-shortened flight of 471 miles (758 km) ended in Wisconsin.

Americans Ralph Upson and R.A.I. Preston captured the cup in 1913, when the race was held in Paris.  But World War I intervened, and it was seven long years before the Gordon Bennett race was resumed.  By then, the world had changed, ravaged by world conflict.  James Gordon Bennett, the race’s sponsor, died in 1918.  The future of flight clearly laid in the airplane; balloons were fast becoming an afterthought, if not a frivolous distraction.   

Nonetheless, the race was revived and held in Birmingham, AL.  Austria and Germany, considered to be guilty parties in the war, were excluded from participating (until 1927).  The event proved to be a great success with the public, but not for the American pilots.  This was the year Belgium’s Ernest Demutyer began his long reign as King of the Gordon Bennett.  His flight, from Birmingham to Lake Champlain in Vermont, remains the fifth longest in Gordon Bennett history (1,099 mi./1769 km.). 

In 1926, Ward T. Van Orman ended the Belgians’ streak with the first of his three Gordon Bennett wins.  The 1927 race was held in Detroit, MI, just a few months after Lindbergh completed his historic powered non-stop crossing of the Atlantic.  The Germans were back (the Austrians would not return until 1931) with high hopes of victory.  However, the last years of the 1920’s were to be all red, white, and blue.  Edward Hill and A.G. Schlosser won the 1927 race with a 744 mi. (1198 km.) flight. 

In 1928, the race was back in Detroit, with much hoopla: it included a 6,000-mile airplane race with 50 competitors as well as an air show.  Orville Wright (yes, that Orville) was the race director.  Sixty thousand spectators were on hand to hear Edsel Ford (yes, that Edsel) fire the starting gun.  Once again, the Americans claimed victory.  The team of William Kepner and W.O. Eareckson flew only 460 miles (741 km), but in a storm-lashed year, it was enough. 

The race moved to St. Louis in 1929 and to Cleveland in 1930.  Both events were won by Ward Van Orman and A.L. McCracken.  Once again, thunderstorms plagued the 1929 race, creating some of the most difficult flying conditions in the race’s history.  The three American teams swept the top three places, demonstrating the superiority of American-made balloons manufactured by Goodyear.  But the world was losing interest in balloon races and the Europeans were losing interest in a race clearly dominated by the Yanks.  The American teams swept again in 1930, but only six teams -- three American, three European -- competed. 

Clearly, something needed to be done.  The Gordon Bennett took a year off in 1931, and the Americans agreed to let the F.A.I. choose a site for the 1932 race.  The event was held in Basle, Switzerland, but the switch in continents didn’t faze the Americans.  T.G.W. Settle and W. Bushnell brought the race back to America, and in 1933, the race was held in Chicago.  The winds took the balloons northeast across the Great Lakes.  The heavier German and French balloons were outmatched by the lighter weight balloons of the Americans.  However, this time, a European team had the lightweight technology to stay with the home team.  Polish pilots Franxyzek Hynek and Zbigniew Bruzynski triumphed and began several years of Polish domination of the Gordon Bennett.  Their run of success was broken only by the great Ernest Demuyter’s last two victories . . . and by World War II.

The Great War, with its emphasis on air power, was no place for balloons, although the Japanese launched unmanned, pyrotechnic-carrying gas balloons, called Fu Go’s, in a far-fetched scheme to unleash terror on the United States.  Several of the Fu Go’s actually made it to the Americas, though they caused few deaths and little damage.  In the aftermath of the war, gas ballooning was largely forgotten with the exception of a few romantic enthusiasts around the world. 

Two parallel events probably led to the revival of interest in a distance gas balloon race.  One was the growing visibility of, and popularity of, hot air ballooning.  The other and more important factor was the highly publicized quest to become the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean by balloon.  This feat was finally achieved by Albuquerqueans Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman in 1978.  The next year, the first of four races held under the name of Gordon Bennett was held.  However, these races were not officially sanctioned and do not appear on the record books.

The Gordon Bennett officially resumed in 1983, with a storm-lashed launch from the Place de la Concorde in Paris.  The Poles picked right up where they left off in 1938, winning a race shortened by international borders (East Germany would not permit balloons to fly into the country).  Americans Maxie Anderson and Don Ida, flying as non-competitors, died in a balloon accident on the East German border.

The race didn’t return to America until 1993, exactly 60 years after its last appearance in the United States.  In 1992, Americans David Levin and James Herschend became the first U.S. winners since T.G.W. Settle in 1932.  By then, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta had become the world’s most visible and attended ballooning event.  The Balloon Fiesta had also, from time to time, hosted gas balloon races.  Bringing the race to Albuquerque was a logical step.

The Balloon Fiesta’s organizers knew how to put on a show, and the launch of the 1993 Gordon Bennett had all the pageantry the event staff could dream up.  With 20 balloons from 10 nations competing, it was one of the largest distance balloon races in history.  Each team launched to the strains of its national anthem played live by the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. 

However, if the Americans had hopes that the home field advantage would assure victory, they were mistaken.  This proved to be a race where those who could best use the weather data prevailed.  For 13 crews, convective activity and the lack of ability to clear the mountains spelled an early end to the race.  It was a miserable year for the Yanks -- the best finish the team could muster up was 11th.  And, it was a year where experience paid off.  The great Josef Starkbaum won the last of his record-setting seven victories with the third longest Gordon Bennett flight in the history of the event.  With co-pilot Rainer Rohsler, he flew 1138 miles (1832 km.) to a landing at Campbellsport, MN. 

It was to be another 11 years before an American team would win a Gordon Bennett, but as fate would have it, the race would return to the United States long before.  In 1999, following the weather-related cancellation of the 1998 race, the F.A.I. requested bids from potential host cities.  As a result of that process, the F.A.I. brought the Gordon Bennett back to Albuquerque, which had the infrastructure already in place to run a large-scale gas balloon race.  In addition to having run the 1993 Gordon Bennett, the Balloon Fiesta had hosted the World Gas Balloon Championships in 1994 and had begun its own gas balloon distance race, the America’s Challenge, in 1995. 

Once again, the home field advantage didn’t help the U.S. teams.  The Belgian team of Phillipe de Cock and Ronny Van Havare flew 1,035 miles (1667 km), landing in Mississippi to take home top honors.  The Canadian team of Leo Burman and Danielle Francoeur finished second, the highest finish up to that time for a woman pilot in the race.  Teams from Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany rounded out the top five.  Troy Bradley and Bruce Hale, the highest-finishing American team, finished sixth.

Now, the Gordon Bennett returns to America for the 12th time -- the highest number of races in any single country.  America won the honor on the strength of the fourth-longest flight in Gordon Bennett history.  In 2004, Richard Abruzzo and Carol Rymer Davis flew 1,120 miserable miles (1,803 km, much of it over water and in the rain) from Thionville, France to Vannas, Sweden.   Their victory brings the race home to Abruzzo’s home town, and Rymer Davis’ former home town, Albuquerque.  At the 2004 America’s Challenge, David Levin and Lesley Pritchard won the right to lead the other two American teams competing for the Cup. 

And, for the first time, the Gordon Bennett will be held in concert with another major gas balloon race, the America’s Challenge.  The America’s Challenge, in nine years, has evolved into a prestigious event in its own right, attracting a distinguished international field.  The Gordon Bennett competitors will launch first, followed by the America’s Challenge teams.  It should be spectacular!  Stay tuned!

The authors of our Coupe Gordon Bennett material gratefully acknowledge Ulrich Hohmann, Sr.and Uli Hohmann, Jr. of Germany, who have compiled in detail the history of the Gordon Bennett, along with the work done by Hans Åkerstedt of Sweden and others in compiling information on notable balloon flights and achievements.  This information may be accessed through the Web Site of the Ballooning Commission of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, www.fai.org. 

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