At 8:43 p.m. on Friday, August 11, 1978, the helium-filled Double Eagle II rose from a clover patch in Presque Isle, Maine, carrying three Albuquerque businessmen: Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman. Their goal was to do what fourteen previous attempts had failed to do—cross the Atlantic Ocean by balloon. The black-and-silver envelope, 160,000 cubic feet of helium rising eleven stories high, carried a tiny twin-hulled gondola the size of a closet. For five days, seventeen hours, and six minutes the crew rode the winds at altitudes up to 21,000 feet, enduring a “cold sink” that plunged the gondola temperature to minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit and coated their equipment in ice. They wore Icelandic wool and shivered through the night, tossing sand and lead ballast to stay aloft. At 10:02 p.m. on Wednesday, August 16, they crossed the west coast of Ireland at Louisburgh, County Mayo—the first balloonists ever to achieve a transatlantic crossing. Dawn found them over Wales, escorted by a flock of light aircraft and helicopters. They landed on August 17 in a wheat field at Miserey, France, fifty miles short of Le Bourget but squarely in history. President Carter telegrammed his congratulations: “On behalf of all the American people, I salute your triumphant adventure.” The Double Eagle II had closed the final Atlantic gap first opened by Lindbergh’s wings fifty-one years before.