Word: fraenckel
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...that is, until last week. At 9:41 on Tuesday morning, a Belarussian helicopter gunship opened fire on a balloon captained by Alan Fraenckel, 55, an airline pilot with TWA, and his partner, John Stuart-Jervis, 68, a retired British pilot who made his home in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Within seconds they were dead--shot out of the sky over a remote Belarussian forest...
...permission for the balloons to cross their airspace. Pilots, after all, could not fully control where the winds took them. Having received approval from every government, including Belarus', the balloons ascended from Wil, near the Swiss city of St. Gallen, at 7:45 a.m. Over the next 60 hours, Fraenckel and Stuart-Jervis, together with two other balloons also piloted by Americans, drifted north toward Dresden, passed through Germany and eventually entered Poland. By 9:30 a.m. last Tuesday, they were poised to cross the Polish-Belarussian border...
Belarus claims that information never reached officials at the military base, 100 miles southwest of Minsk, where a blip produced by Fraenckel and Stuart-Jervis' balloon suddenly appeared on radar screens, dangerously close to one of several strategic missile bases that dot the area. Belarussian officials sent two Mi-24 helicopter gunships into the air to investigate. One of the choppers found the balloon, approached within 110 yards and attempted, without success, to establish radio contact. (Race organizers suspect that the pilots were unable to respond because their batteries had gone dead during the three-day flight...
...roughly the same time, the two other balloons over Belarus were confronted in similar fashion; the pilots quickly unfurled flags and were permitted to land. More than 25 minutes of circling Fraenckel and Stuart-Jervis' craft, however, brought no reply from inside the gondola, which was covered with thick canvas. After firing warning shots, the helicopter pilot became convinced that the craft was unmanned. Ordered to bring it down, the chopper fired about 20 bullets, enough to send the balloon and its gondola plunging to the forest below. Belarussian officials then kept silent for 24 hours while they sifted...
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