Double Eagle II, piloted by Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman, became the first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it landed on 17 August 1978 in Miserey near Paris, 137 hours and 6 minutes after leaving Presque Isle, Maine.

Newman originally intended to hang glide from the balloon to a landing, while Anderson and Abruzzo continued to fly, but the hang-glider had to be dropped as ballast earlier on 16 August.

Television images showed a highway nearby, its shoulders and outer lanes crowded with stopped cars, people sweeping across the farm field to the landing spot.

British balloonists Don Cameron and Christopher Davey feted the trio at a party that included a balloon shaped like the Double Eagle II.

The gondola is displayed at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum annex at Washington Dulles International Airport in the Chantilly area of Fairfax County, Virginia, United States.

[1] All previous attempts at transatlantic balloon flights were launched from somewhere in North America, except for The Small World by Peter Elstob et al. in 1958, which took off from the Canary Islands.

[citation needed] The Zanussi (attempt #13) in 1978, by Don Cameron and Christopher Davey, came closest to success, ditching 110 miles (180 km) off of France after the gas bag ripped.

[5] In September 1986, Evelien Brink, her husband Henk and Willem Hageman completed the first transatlantic balloon flight by a European team and first with a woman aboard.