SCHWEINFURT, West Germany -- Famed American balloonists Maxie Anderson and Don Ida plunged to their deaths after deliberately cutting loose the balloon's gondola in a landing maneuver that went awry, West German investigators said today.
Officials said autopsies today on the bodies of Anderson, 48, and Ida, 49, at a mortuary in Bad Kissingen showed they died of massive internal injuries suffered in the crash Monday.
'Their balloon had a mechanism to dump the basket while hovering a few feet from the ground but this evidently happened too early and at a much higher altitude than they wanted,' Schweinfurt state prosecutor Walter Muelzer said.
When the crash occurred, Anderson, of Albuquerque, N.M., the first man to cross the Atlantic in a ballooon, and Ida, of Longmont, Colo., were manning one of four helium-filled balloons left in an endurance contest that started in Paris.
Police and aviation experts were also investigating the theory that Anderson and Ida had attempted a forced landing to avoid being carried into East Germany or Czechoslovakia, whose borders are only 30 miles from the crash site.
Competition officials said East Germany had denied permission to the baloonists to enter its air space and West German police said the balloonists at first recieved permission to fly into Czechoslovakia but were later denied it.
Police said the aluminum gondola broke free from the balloon and dropped into a forest at Schoenderling, in central Germany near the East German border about 42 miles north of Wuerzburg and some 140 miles east of Bonn.
Police seized recordings and a film of part of the flight taken by an amateur filmmaker for their investigation.
A spokesman for the West German Search and Rescue Unit said Monday the crash could have been caused by the balloon striking a high-tension overhead power cable. Police speculated the pair was trying to land before they reached the East German border.
Rainstorms and light winds forced 17 of the 19 starters by late Monday to drop out of the race, the Aeroclub de France to mark the 200th anniversary of the first hot-air ballon flight.
A West German air force spokesman said Anderson and Ida radioed Frankfurt Monday afternoon 20 minutes before the crash, and said they were 'in trouble' and had difficulty controlling their balloon.
He said police and air force observers watched the balloon fly low over the forest with ropes dangling from the gondola. One witness said he saw both men pitching ballast out of the craft.
Police said the balloon disappeared over a wooded hill and when it was next sighted, soaring toward East Germany, the basket was missing. Police at the scene said the gondola had plummeted into the forest, killing both men.
'The aluminium gondola of the balloon was completely destroyed. It would have been impossible to survive such a fall,' an air force spokesman said.
Anderson was a millionaire mining company executive who first gained fame in 1978 when he joined with Ben Abruzzo and Larry Newman, also of Albuquerque, to make the first balloon crossing from the United States to Britain in his 'Double Eagle II.'
Newman, described as 'terribly saddened' by his secretary, issued a brief statement in Albuquerque in which he called Anderson a 'community leader and above all a fierce competitor. I'm sure the community will miss him dearly.'
Last year and in 1981, Anderson twice unsuccessfully attempted to cir:umnavigate the world. In 1982, his 'Jules Verne' balloon was forced to break off the attempt and land in New Delhi.
Anderson and his son also made the first balloon flight across North America.
