Ed Yost

Inventor and daring pilot of the modern hot-air balloon

Ed Yost, the rumbustious American aviator who created the modern hot-air balloon, has died aged 87. The funds for his experimental work came from a division of the US government that wanted to send spies across difficult borders; a balloon can fly over a frontier, land, drop its pilot, and then drift on with no one sure of its touchdown point.

Yost's previous experience was in research into the physics of the upper atmosphere with unmanned balloons and giant balloons - millions of cubic feet in volume when fully inflated at 100,000ft. When money was made available in the late 1950s for a small balloon to carry one man for three hours, he, with his colleagues, set up business at Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Yost was born on a farm near Bristow, Iowa, and studied at the Boeing School of Aeronautics in Oakland. In 1940 he was hired as a civilian employee of the army and assigned to balloon design. After the war, he worked as a civilian pilot in Alaska and in 1949 was hired as an engineer by General Mills, the cereals giant, which had a high-altitude research division that did contract work for the US navy.

Hot air had lofted the very first aerostat craft in 1783, but burning straw to provide lift had long since given way to the more amenable hydrogen. As a modern fuel, Yost chose propane, since its pressure under normal circumstances was more useful than either paraffin or petrol.

For his envelope he chose coated nylon, with a camping stool for his gondola, because he wanted to keep weight to a minimum. For a takeoff place, he selected the state of Nebraska, which had fewer ground-based obstacles even than South Dakota.

He found takeoff impossible on the first flight, as the burner roared and the envelope inflated, until his colleagues walked the balloon downwind to reduce the cooling effect of the modest breeze. The burner still roared with maximum power, taking Yost to 500ft; then he sank to the ground, where he landed solidly. Plainly more power was a prime necessity.

The second flight took Yost to 7,000ft, where he yo-yo'd alarmingly, as the fuel tap took too long to switch on or off. This defect was modified. The third flight was started, with growing confidence, from Sioux Falls.

Throughout 1960 and 1961, Yost made a score of flights, each improving on the basic design. The government officials were pleased with his results, and the Yost team also realised that they had pioneeered a splendid sporting vehicle. They decided they had to publicise this novelty, and where better than the English Channel?

I watched their takeoff from Rye, Sussex, in April 1963, and was appalled by the contrivance. The camping stool had been replaced by a broad plank, and the two aeronauts (Yost and Don Piccard) sat on a couple of propane cylinders, with one slender ribbon preventing, or at least modestly hindering, premature exit overboard.

They said the landing technique was to disconnect two of the four wires between plank and envelope, and then career, sledge-like, until they met a barrier, such as a hedge. When firmly over French soil after a flight of 3 hours, 17 minutes, they met just such a blessed obstacle, the balloon deflated on its other side, and the fliers were caught in the hedge.

The French promoter of this endeavour, Charles Dollfus, showed the Americans the tattoos on his behind, one of a gas balloon and the other of a hot-air balloon. British enthusiasts never took to the tattoos, but they did follow Yost's pioneering flight four years later. They replaced the planks and stools with a proper, protective wickerwork basket. Thereafter the sport took off, in Britain and around the world.

This country now has 1,000 pilots, who all thank Yost for his courageous achievement. The British Balloon and Airship Club invited him to Britain last year for a festive week and the award of its most prestigious trophy.

Having crossed the Channel, it was almost inevitable that Yost should try and be first to balloon the Atlantic. He launched from Maine in 1976, and travelled 2,740 miles in four and a half days, but was forced to ditch when he could no longer reach Portugal. The flight was technically a failure, although his distance and his time aloft broke records.

He also invented a disposable polythene balloon, like a colossal shopping bag, which he transported in a can four feet high. European balloonists, often plus-four-wearers who relished old-style ballooning of the sandbag and grapnel variety, were shocked by this US enthusiasm for having everything canned for convenience. Worse still, Yost tore up the polythene envelope on landing and gave it away to the children always present at a touchdown.

Yost died while mowing the lawn at his home 8,000ft up in the forested mountains near Vadito, New Mexico. He had two sons, who survive him, from his first marriage. His second wife, Suzanne, died in 2001. He was buried by her in his home town of Bristol, Indiana.

· Paul Edward Yost, aviator and balloon designer, born June 13 1919; died May 27 2007