Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way

by Richard Branson

  I had vaguely heard of Per Lindstrand. I knew that he was a world expert at ballooning and held several records, including one for reaching the highest altitude. Per explained to me that nobody had flown a hot-air balloon further than 600 miles, and nobody had been able to keep a hot-air balloon up in the air for longer than 27 hours. In order to cross the Atlantic, a balloon would have to fly more than 3,000 miles, five times further than anyone had ever managed before, and spend three times longer up in the air.

  A balloon filled with helium, like the old zeppelins, can stay in the air for several days. A hot-air balloon relies on the hot air within the envelope rising above the surrounding cold air and taking the balloon with it. But the loss of heat through the balloon’s envelope is rapid, and, in order to heat the air, balloonists burn propane. Until Per’s proposed flight, hot-air balloons had been hampered by the impossible weight of fuel needed to keep them afloat.

  Per thought that we could break the flight record by putting three theories into practice. The first one was to take the balloon up to an altitude of around 30,000 feet and fly along in the fast winds, the jet streams, which move along at speeds of up to 200 miles an hour. This had previously been considered impossible as their power and turbulence could shred any balloon. The second was to use solar power to heat the balloon’s air during the day and thus save fuel. This had never been attempted. The third was that, since the balloon would be flying at 30,000 feet, the pilots would be in a pressurised capsule rather than the traditional wicker basket.

  As I studied Per’s proposal, I realised with amazement that this vast balloon, a huge ungainly thing which could swallow the Royal Albert Hall without showing a bulge, was actually intended to cross the Atlantic Ocean in far less time than our Atlantic Challenger boat with its 4,000-horsepower engine. Per reckoned on a flying time of under two days, with an average speed of 90 knots compared with the boat’s speed of just under 40 knots. It would be rather like driving along in the fast lane of the motorway only to be overtaken by the Royal Albert Hall travelling twice as fast.

  After wrestling with some of the science and the academic calculations about inertia and wind speeds, I asked Per to come and see me. When we met, I put my hand on the pile of theoretical calculations.

  ‘I’ll never understand all the science and theory,’ I said, ‘but I’ll come with you if you answer me this one question.’

  ‘Of course,’ Per said, stiffening his back in readiness for some incredibly challenging question.

  ‘Do you have any children?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got two.’

  ‘Right, then.’ I stood up and shook his hand. ‘I’ll come. But I’d better learn how to fly one of these things first.’

  It was only later that I learnt that seven people had already tried to be the first to cross the Atlantic and that five of them had perished.

  Per took me for a week’s crash course on ballooning in Spain. I discovered that ballooning is one of the most exhilarating things I had ever done. The combination of soaring up over the world, the silence when the burners are off, the sensation of floating, and the breathtaking panoramic views all immediately seduced me. After a week of being shouted at by Robin Batchelor, my instructor, who looked like my double, I had my balloon licence. I was ready.

  As the prevailing jet stream flows from west to east, we found a launch site in Maine, close to Boston, about a hundred miles inland to avoid the effect of sea breezes. Per reckoned that by the time we crossed the coast we should be up in the jet stream and above the local weather. Our two key mentors were Tom Barrow, who headed the engineering team, and Bob Rice, an expert meteorologist. Both men were clearly such authorities that I unreservedly put my trust in them. The jet stream parts over the Atlantic, with one branch heading up to the Arctic and another branch swerving down to the Azores and back out to the middle of the ocean. Bob Rice told us that getting our route right was like ‘rolling a ball bearing between two magnets’. In the event of running out of fuel or icing up, we would have to ditch the balloon at sea.

  ‘There are flotation collars round the capsule which will keep it buoyant,’ Tom Barrow said.

  ‘What if they don’t work?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll get your money back,’ he said. ‘Or rather, we’ll get the money back on your behalf.’

  At our final briefing with Tom at Sugarloaf Mountain, Maine, the day before the balloon went up, he went through the last emergency drills: ‘Landing this thing is going to be like freewheeling a Sherman tank without any brakes. It’s going to be a crash.’

  His last warning was the most telling: ‘Now, even though we’re here, I can still abort this project if I think it’s too dangerous or if you develop health problems.’

  ‘Does that include mental-health problems?’ I joked.

  ‘No,’ Tom said. ‘That’s a prerequisite for doing this flight. If you’re not completely nuts and scared to death, then you shouldn’t be on board in the first place.’

  I was certainly scared to death.

  17 ‘I was almost certainly going to die.’

  1987–1988

  PER AND I TOOK sleeping pills the evening before the launch. When we were woken up at 2a.m. it was pitch-dark, but as we were driven to the launch site we saw the vast balloon lit up by floodlights and towering over the trees. It looked astonishing: the sides were silver and the dome was black. It was monumental. The balloon was fully inflated and straining at the anchors. We were worried that a wind might strike up and tip it over, so we climbed into the capsule and the ground crew set about the final checks.

  Inside the capsule, we were unaware of the accident which actually catapulted us upward. A cable became caught round two of the propane tanks and as the balloon strained up and down it pulled them off. Without their weight, the balloon shot up, still trailing a couple of cables carrying sandbags. As we gained height and headed over the Maine forest towards the sea, Per climbed out of the capsule and cut the last two cables. We made rapid progress towards the glowing dawn, soaring along in the jet stream at 85 knots – just under 100 miles an hour. After ten hours we had flown over 900 miles and had easily broken the long-distance record for a hot-air balloon. Over the radio Bob Rice told us to keep at 27,000 feet whatever happened, since that was where the fast winds were.

  That first night we hit a storm and came down to calmer weather, but it was snowing and we immediately lost the speed of the jet stream.

  ‘We need to get back up there,’ Per said. He fired the burners and we rose again to meet the bad weather. The balloon was buffeted hard by the storm and the capsule was tossed to and fro, but just when we wondered whether we should head back down we shot out into clear weather and reached a speed of 140 knots – over 160 miles an hour. The next morning the Virgin 747, Maiden Voyager, arrived and flew in a figure of eight round us. My mother’s voice came crackling over the radio:

  ‘Faster, Richard, faster! We’ll race you.’

  ‘I’m doing my best, Mum. Please thank the crew and passengers for going out of their way to greet us,’ I said.

  In fact, we sped along and crossed the coast of Ireland at 2.30 that afternoon, Friday 3 July. It was a dream crossing compared with the boat. We had been in the air for just 29 hours.

  The incredible speed of our flight gave us an unexpected problem: we still had three full tanks of fuel attached to the capsule, and they could well explode on landing. We decided to swoop down very low and drop off the fuel tanks in an empty field, and then come down a second time for a controlled landing. Per stopped burning propane and brought the balloon down low so that we could see where we could safely jettison the extra fuel tanks. As we came down, the wind suddenly swirled around us, much harder than we expected. The ground rushed up to meet us. Travelling at a speed of almost 30 knots, 35 miles an hour, our groundspeed was not so much the problem as our sudden plunge downward. We hit the ground and bounced along a field. All our fuel tanks were torn off by the impact, along with our radio aerials.
Without the weight of the tanks, we hurtled back upward. I didn’t see it, but we narrowly missed a house and an electricity pylon. We had hit the ground in Limavady, a tiny Irish village.

  With no fuel tanks we were utterly out of control. Unless we could heat the air, once this rise topped out we would fall rapidly, gathering speed like someone in an unopened parachute. We had one small reserve fuel tank inside the capsule with us, and Per quickly connected it to the burners.

  ‘It’s tangled,’ Per said. ‘The cables are tangled.’

  The balloon was rising like a rocket. The top of the dome was forced down by the pressure, and the cable that hung down the middle of the balloon snagged on something and started spinning us round in a knot. The whole balloon was twisting itself into a corkscrew, closing the mouth so that there was no chance of heating the hot air inside. As we began to drift downward, I opened the capsule hatch and climbed out on top. I took my knife and hacked away at the twisted cable.

  ‘Quick!’ Per shouted up at me. ‘We’re falling fast.’

  I finally managed to cut the cable, and the balloon whipped round. The dome straightened out, and the hole in the bottom of the envelope was open.

  ‘Get in!’ Per yelled.

  As I dropped down through the hatch, he fired the burners full blast. We were within 300 feet of the ground, but the burst of heat steadied our descent and we rose again. I tried some switches, but there was no power in the capsule.

  ‘Damn,’ I said. ‘No lights, no radio, no fuel gauge. Only the altimeter’s working.’

  ‘Let’s try coming down on the beach,’ Per said. ‘We can’t risk anywhere inland.’

  I put on my life jacket and parachute, and attached the life raft to my belt. We saw the coastline approaching and Per vented hot air from the top of the balloon to reduce our height. But once again the ground wind was considerably stronger then we expected and it swept us out to sea. We were heading northeast, and without the radio or electricity in the capsule we were more than ever at the mercy of the wind.

  ‘Hold tight,’ Per said.

  He let out more air, alternating this with burning propane to try to reduce the speed of our descent through the thick grey cloud. As we finally came out of the fog, I saw the foaming sea rising up to meet us. We’d missed the beach. We were going far too fast. I realised the truth of Tom Barrow’s words: it was like trying to stop a Sherman tank without brakes. With horror, I watched the ocean rushing towards us.

  We hit the sea, crashing me into Per. We were tilted at a crazy angle, unable to stand upright. The balloon started to drag us across the surface of the ocean. We were being bounced from wave to wave.

  ‘The bolts!’ Per shouted.

  He grabbed hold of the chair and hauled himself upward. I tried to help push him to his feet, but the capsule was smashing up and down and each time I reached up I was knocked back. I watched Per’s hand stretch out, grasp the red lever and pull it down. This was supposed to fire the explosive bolts, which would sever the cables connecting the capsule to the balloon. In theory the balloon would then sail away and crumple into the sea, leaving the capsule to float on the water.

  But nothing happened. Per yanked the lever up and down but the bolts did not fire.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Per yelled. ‘The bolts are dead.’

  The balloon was now bouncing us across the Irish Sea like a monstrous beachball. I was knocked sideways again and hit the upturned edge of the flight deck.

  ‘Get out!’ Per shouted at me. ‘Richard, we’ve got to get out.’

  Per braced himself against the hatch, wrenched down the levers and pushed it open. The balloon slowed for a moment as the capsule dug into the water, and Per heaved himself up and climbed through the hatch. As I saw Per’s backside squeeze through the hatch and disappear from view, I lunged after him and followed him up the rungs. I noticed that Per was still wearing his parachute. We clutched at the steel hawsers and tried to balance on the tilting capsule.

  ‘Where’s your life jacket?’ I shouted.

  Per didn’t seem to hear me. The wind and the roar of the sea blew my words straight back into my face. The balloon was lurching at an angle, one side of it ploughing through the grey sea. It showed no signs of slowing down. Behind us we left a foaming white wake. Then a gust of wind caught us and the balloon lifted off the surface.

  Per threw himself off the top of the capsule into the cold black water. The drop seemed at least 100 feet. I was sure that he’d killed himself.

  I hesitated. Then I realised with horror that I was too late. Without Per’s weight, the huge balloon soared up. I almost fell backward over the edge of the capsule as it swung underneath the balloon like a pendulum. I ducked down, grabbed hold of the railing and watched the grey sea fall away beneath me. I was rising rapidly, and I couldn’t see Per. Now that the balloon was sailing with the wind and no longer dragging the capsule through the water, it was much quieter. I watched with mounting dread as I soared upward into thick cloud and lost sight of everything.

  I was now by myself, flying in the biggest balloon ever built, and heading towards Scotland. The wind was freezing cold; the sea below me was icy; and I was in thick fog. I had only the tiny emergency fuel tank left.

  I climbed back into the capsule. It was now the right way up and I felt reassured to see the screens and controls the way they had been as we crossed the Atlantic. I ran through the options: I could parachute into the sea, where nobody would be likely to find me and I could drown; or I could sail up into the darkening sky and try a night landing, should I be lucky enough to reach land. I picked up the microphone, but the radio was still dead. I had no contact with the outside world.

  The altimeter ticked down so I instinctively fired the propane. To my delight, the flame surged up inside the balloon and steadied it. I had assumed that the seawater had killed the burners. I gave a good long blast and the balloon started rising again. I was having difficulty breathing so I put on an oxygen mask. I checked the altimeter: 12,000 feet. Thick white cloud pressed all around me. I had no sense of where I was. All I knew was that the grey foaming sea was waiting for me below. Before Per had ditched the balloon, he had told me that it was unlikely we had enough fuel to reach Scotland before dark. The remaining spare fuel tank gave me only about an hour’s worth of flying. Sooner or later I would have to face the Irish Sea again.

  I wondered about the explosive bolts. Perhaps they had cut through one, two, three or even four of the five key cables that held the capsule to the balloon. Perhaps even now that last cable was straining and fraying under the weight and might give way. If so, the capsule would plunge straight down into the sea and I would be killed on impact. It was this fear which had prompted Per to jump. The capsule hatch was still open and I gave the propane one good long burn before climbing out once more on to the top of the capsule to look at the cables. It was now completely quiet. I could not see all the cables without leaning out over the capsule railings. Standing amid the swirling white cloud, I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness. The cables looked intact so I squeezed back inside the hatch.

  Whatever I did in the next ten minutes would lead to my death or survival. I was on my own. We had broken the record but I was almost certainly going to die. Per, with no survival suit, was either dead or trying to swim on. I had to get somebody to find him. I had to survive. I cleared my mind and concentrated on the options in front of me. I hadn’t slept for over 24 hours and my mind felt fuzzy. I decided to take the balloon up high enough so I could parachute off the capsule. I blasted the burners and then found my notebook and scrawled across the open page, ‘Joan, Holly, Sam, I love you.’ I waited until the altimeter showed 8,000 feet and then climbed outside.

  I was alone in the cloud. I crouched by the railings and looked down. I was still wheeling through the possibilities. If I jumped, I would be likely to have only two minutes to live. If I managed to open my parachute, I would still end up in the sea, where I would probably drown. I felt for the parach
ute release tag, and wondered whether it was the right one. Perhaps due to my dyslexia, I have a mental block about which is right and which is left, especially with parachutes. The last time I had free-fallen I pulled the wrong release tag and jettisoned my parachute. At the time I had several skydivers around me, so they activated my reserve parachute. But now I was by myself at 8,000 feet. I slapped myself hard across the face to concentrate. There had to be a better way.

  ‘Give yourself more time,’ I said out loud. ‘Come on.’

  As I crouched on top of the capsule, I looked up at the vast balloon above me. The realisation dawned that I was standing beneath the world’s largest parachute. If I could bring the balloon down, then perhaps I could jump off into the sea at the last moment before we crashed. I now knew I had enough fuel for another thirty minutes. It must be better to live for thirty minutes than jump off with my parachute and perhaps live for only two minutes.

  ‘While I’m alive I can still do something,’ I said. ‘Something must turn up.’

  I climbed back inside and took off my parachute. I made up my mind. I would do anything for those extra minutes. I grabbed some chocolate, zipped it into my jacket pocket, and checked that my torch was still there.

  Peering out of the capsule into the fog below me, I tried to work out when I should stop burning, when I should open the vent, and when I should leave the controls and climb out on top of the capsule for my final jump. I knew that I had to judge the last burn exactly so that the balloon would hit the sea as slowly as possible. Despite losing all our fuel tanks, the balloon was still carrying a weight of around three tonnes.

  As I came out through the bottom of the clouds, I saw the grey sea below me. I also saw an RAF helicopter. I gave a last burn on the propane to slow my descent, and then left the balloon to come down of its own accord. I grabbed a red rag and climbed out through the hatch. I squatted on the top of the capsule and waved the rag at the helicopter pilot. He waved back rather casually, seemingly oblivious to my panic.