Eighty hydrogen balloons make this aerial umbrella beneath which Lieutenant Peter Rayner drifts to earth in a balloon hopping demonstration , but he was successfully brought to earth by one of his sergeants , who made a flying rugby tackle at his legs . Rayner , 24 , is attached to a parachute battalion of the Territorial Army . It took his men and himself 50 hours to inflate the balloons for the parachute . 26 June 1959