Search for U.S. Balloonists Ends in Italy
The six-day search for missing American balloonists Richard Abruzzo and Carol Rymer Davis was called off Monday after a robotic camera surfaced from the depths of the Adriatic Sea.
The camera was looking for debris on the seabed at depths reaching more than 650 feet, according to Italian Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Massimo Maccheroni. There is no hope the pair survived.
The last message from Abruzzo, 47, and Davis, 65, came three days into their attempt to win the world's oldest long-distance balloon race, the Coupe Aeronautique Gordon Bennett.
Picked up by the Italian coast guard at 8:15 a.m. local time (2:15 a.m. EDT), the radio transmission indicated the balloonists had suffered what was described as, "a sudden and unexpected failure."
"The pilot said in English that they were going down very fast toward the sea," Rear Admiral Salvatore Giuffre told the Associated Press Television News agency. "Those were the last words he said."
Based on data from tracking units in the Adriatic, race organizers said the balloon had begun a moderate descent, which increased to about 50 miles and hour before contact was lost.
The chances of surviving the impact when hurtling down that fast were deemed to be "unlikely".
Search and rescue teams from the Italian coast guard, the U.S. Navy -- including two U.S. Air Force C-130 planes flying out of Ramstein, Germany -- along with Croatian coastal aircraft crews, scoured the Adriatic Sea, concentrating on an area about twelve miles off the Italian coast where the last transmissions were pinpointed.
At one point, eight Italian divers using underwater cameras were involved. Searches were also made on land in Italy and Croatia.
Debris was found floating in the area late on Friday, but officials couldn't initially say whether it came from the missing balloon.
No trace of the two pilots has been found. They were equipped with survival suits, flotation devices and electronic beacons.
Abruzzo, who worked in a prominent family business in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Davis, a radiologist specializing in reading mammograms, were both experienced and highly regarded balloonists.
They won the Gordon Bennett Cup in 2004. Started in 1906, the competition is the oldest and one of the most prestigious air balloon races of its kind.
The rules are simple: take off from a fixed point - in this case, Bristol, England - and fly as far as possible on one fill of hydrogen. Twenty teams took part, nineteen of them landing in Croatia.
Crammed into a basket only about five feet wide, the balloonists endure freezing temperatures, high winds and other untold perils. They can only control their craft by releasing gas to descend, or throwing out sand to go up.