It was probably for the best that truck driver Larry Walters didn’t inform authorities of his travel plans. After all, aviation officials tend to take a dim view of unlicensed pilots who soar thousands of feet upward into the path of airliners while sitting in a lawn chair suspended from 42 helium balloons.
And so, after leaving his fiancée’s small backyard in the Los Angeles suburb of San Pedro one July morning in 1982, he quickly disappeared from view.
Larry Lawnchair, as he became known, was next seen by airline pilots at 16,500 feet (more than three miles high) preparing to shoot their weather balloons with an air gun so they could gradually descend to the ground. Or at least that was the plan.
The 33-year-old Vietnam War veteran had wanted to become an Air Force pilot, but couldn’t because of his poor eyesight. However, after seeing a weather balloon hanging from a military surplus store when he was 13, he had an idea of how he could find another way to fly.
The enterprising or, depending on your point of view, completely crazy Walters hoped to reach the Mojave Desert, 400 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles, but he “only” traveled 32 kilometers before landing in Long Beach, crashing into power lines and causing a blackout. .
Truck driver Larry Walters, known as Lawnchair Larry, was spotted by airline pilots at 16,500 feet while sitting in a lawn chair suspended from 42 helium balloons in 1982.
Larry passes a police car while carrying his lawn chair after a crash landing from his balloon escapade in the sky.
Now the magnificent pilot and his terrifying flying machine are celebrated in a new musical, 42 Balloons, which premiered at The Lowry theater in Salford, Greater Manchester. Producer Andy Barnes calls the musical “a very human story about dreams.”
And he adds: “It has elements that we have all experienced at some point, along with the most extraordinary ideas that, as human beings, we can think of.” Or as Walters put it rather more succinctly at the time: “A man can’t just sit around.”
His mother, he admitted, was less charitable and “thought maybe he was possessed by the devil, or maybe post-Vietnam stress syndrome.” She wanted her to go see a psychiatrist.
His unorthodox craft consisted of an aluminum outdoor chair purchased at a department store for $109, 13-gallon plastic jugs of water for ballast, a parachute, a life jacket, an altimeter, a Timex watch, a two-way radio. tracks, two liters of Coca-Cola, two flashlights as headlights, a BB gun, sandwiches, a road map of California, a compass and 42 weather balloons, each 7 feet in diameter and a volume of 33 cubic feet.
He didn’t bother putting on his seat belt as the chair was tilted back 10 degrees, so he didn’t think he would fall.
His fiancée, Carol Van Deusen, financed most of the operation and suggested he launch from his backyard, since there was a hospital just down the street.
The couple, helped by some friends (the other members of what Walters grandiosely called his “ground crew”), inflated the balloons overnight and told suspicious police officers who inquired about the contraption that grew up to 150 feet tall. height that they were doing a television commercial. .
The chair, which Walters named Inspiration, was tied with nylon rope to the bumper of a friend’s car outside the house. The balloons, attached to the chair by four ropes, were arranged on four levels above the chair. Walters thought he would ascend majestically to just 100 feet, quietly eat a sandwich and, if all went well, he would move on.
In addition to appearing in the 2009 Pixar animated film Up, group ballooning is now an extreme sport.
Larry and his terrifying flying machine are being celebrated in a new musical, 42 Balloons, which premiered at The Lowry theater in Salford, Greater Manchester.
However, he had miscalculated: his job was oversized. When his ground crew released him, he shot up at a speed of 800 feet per minute, the force breaking the rope holding him and causing his glasses to fall. His girlfriend begged him to come down, but “there was no way,” he said, and he was ending it now.
At first, the experience of climbing up and down a piece of garden furniture was something to savour. “The higher I went, the more I could see, and it was incredible,” she recalled. “Sitting in this little chair and, you know, unreal… I could look at the coast, like forever.”
At one point he saw a private plane below him. But after passing 10,000 feet, at which point he should have started breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank (he didn’t have one), he was floating aimlessly toward controlled airspace over Los Angeles.
A TWA airline pilot radioed to say he had seen a man in a lawn chair with a gun in his hands. A Delta airline pilot reported seeing Walters’ flight crossing the main access corridor to LAX airport. “We have a man in a chair attached to balloons at our ten o’clock position, with a range of five miles,” he told air traffic control.
Numb from the cold and struggling to breathe, Walters realized it was time to go down. He had calculated that he would need to fire seven balloons to ensure a controlled descent to the ground and, after popping them, he placed the gun in his lap while he read the altimeter.
The chair swung forward with a gust of wind and the BB gun fell into the ether. To his horror, the ship began to ascend again. Walters considered using his parachute, but he had only made one jump and wasn’t remotely sure.
At a later official hearing it was said that he would have been taken to 50,000 feet and turned, as he put it, “into a lollipop.”
But providence intervened. Walters began to hear the hiss of gas slowly escaping: the balloons were beginning to leak helium and he was descending again. At about 13,000 feet, he turned on his CB radio to talk to an operator from an emergency rescue unit. ‘You said you have a group of 35 balloons?’ the operator asked, raising his voice in shock. “Just tell Carol I love her and I’m okay,” Walters responded.
As the chair descended, its dangling cables became tangled in a power line. Fortunately, the non-conductive plastic zip ties saved Walters from being electrocuted, although the Long Beach neighborhood experienced a 20-minute blackout.
By strange coincidence, Walters scratched the roof of an off-duty airline pilot, who stood stunned into silence as he watched the event by his pool. Larry the lawn chair landed unharmed about 45 minutes after taking off and was arrested by police.
“We know he violated some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide what part it is, some type of charge will be filed,” a security official said. He was fined $4,000 (later reduced to $1,500) for violations that included operating a “civil aircraft for which there is no certificate of airworthiness” and entering an airport traffic zone without communicating with the control tower. .
Walters became a national celebrity and was paid to appear in advertisements for Timex watches, but he fought back against the ridicule that came his way. “I call it American ingenuity,” he boasted to skeptical talk show host David Letterman. ‘I had confidence in myself and in the craft. ‘I really knew what he was doing.’
Tragically, in 1993, Walters, who had complained that his life felt empty, committed suicide.
However, his moment of prominence was short-lived. After quitting his job as a truck driver, he struggled to make money as a motivational speaker. After breaking up with his girlfriend after 15 years, he never married or had children.
Tragically, in 1993, Walters, who had complained that his life felt empty, walked to his favorite spot in the woods and shot himself.
For most people, his escape must have served as a nightmarish warning to the curious. For some, however, it has been inspiring, as has the name of his profession.
Although Walters was not the first to attempt to fly into the sky with helium balloons, he was the first to reach anything close to the altitude he reached. In addition to appearing in the 2009 Pixar animated film Up, group ballooning is now an extreme sport.
In 2007, an Oregon gas station owner “flew” 240 miles in a balloon-powered lawn chair. In 2010, American Jonathan Trappe crossed the English Channel suspended from balloons. However, in 1992 a Japanese adventurer headed towards the Pacific and was never seen again. A Brazilian priest who climbed in 2008 tied to 1,000 helium balloons drowned in the Atlantic.
Acrobatic magician David Blaine reached 24,900 feet in 2020, but he had oxygen, satellite positioning, remote-controlled ballast, and miniature explosives to pop balloons. So not a single patch on the man whose flying chair is preserved at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
“It wasn’t any death wish,” Walters said. “But you couldn’t pay me to do it again.”