Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902-August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist.
At the age of 25 in 1927, he went from obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame by winning the Orteig Prize for making a non-stop flight from New York City to Paris on May 20–21.
Lindbergh covered the 33+1⁄2-hour, 5,800 km flight alone in a purpose-built, single-engine Ryan monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis.
Though the first non-stop transatlantic flight had been completed eight years earlier, this was the first solo transatlantic flight, the first transatlantic flight between two major city hubs, and the longest transatlantic flight by almost 2,000 miles. Thus, it is widely considered a turning point in world history for the development and advancement.
Lindbergh was an officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve and received the United States' highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his transatlantic flight. His achievement spurred significant global interest in both commercial aviation and air mail, which revolutionized the aviation industry worldwide, and he devoted much time and effort to promoting such activity.
In
March 1932, Lindbergh's infant son, Charles Jr., was kidnapped and
murdered in what the American media called the Crime of the Century.
The case prompted the United States Congress to establish kidnapping as a
federal crime if a kidnapper crosses state lines with a victim. By late
1935, the hysteria surrounding the case had driven the Lindbergh family
into exile in Europe, from where they returned in 1939.
More information: Charles Lindbergh
In the years before the United States entered World War II, Lindbergh's non-interventionist stance and statements about Jews led some to suspect that he was a Nazi sympathizer, although Lindbergh never publicly stated support for Nazi Germany. He opposed not only the intervention of the United States but also the provision of aid to the United Kingdom.
He supported the anti-war America First Committee and resigned his commission in the U.S. Army Air Forces in April 1941 after President Franklin Roosevelt publicly rebuked him for his views. In September 1941, Lindbergh gave a significant address, titled Speech on Neutrality, outlining his views and arguments against greater American involvement in the war.
Lindbergh did ultimately express public support for the U.S. war effort after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent United States declaration of war upon Germany. He flew 50 missions in the Pacific Theater of World War II as a civilian consultant, but did not take up arms, as Roosevelt refused to reinstate his Air Corps colonel's commission. In his later years, Lindbergh became a prolific author, international explorer, inventor, and environmentalist, eventually dying of lymphoma in 1974 at age 72.
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Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4, 1902, and spent most of his childhood in Little Falls, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C.
From an early age, Lindbergh had exhibited an interest in the mechanics of motorized transportation, including his family's Saxon Six automobile, and later his Excelsior motorbike. By the time that he started college as a mechanical engineering student, he had also become fascinated with flying, though he had never been close enough to a plane to touch it.
After quitting college in February 1922, Lindbergh enrolled at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation's flying school in Lincoln and flew for the first time on April 9 as a passenger in a two-seat Lincoln Standard Tourabout biplane trainer piloted by Otto Timm.
A few days later, Lindbergh took his first formal flying lesson in that same aircraft, though he was never permitted to solo because he could not afford to post the requisite damage bond.
To gain flight experience and earn money for further instruction, Lindbergh left Lincoln in June to spend the next few months barnstorming across Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana as a wing walker and parachutist. He also briefly worked as an aeroplane mechanic at the Billings, Montana, municipal airport.
In
October 1925, Lindbergh was hired by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation
(RAC) at the Lambert-St. Louis Flying Field in Anglum, Missouri, where
he had been working as a flight instructor, to first lay out and then
serve as chief pilot for the newly designated 447 km Contract Air Mail
Route #2 (CAM-2) to provide service between St. Louis and Chicago
(Maywood Field) with two intermediate stops in Springfield and Peoria,
Illinois.
Lindbergh and three other RAC pilots, Philip R. Love, Thomas P. Nelson, and Harlan A. Bud Gurney, flew the mail over CAM-2 in a fleet of four modified war-surplus de Havilland DH-4 biplanes. Just before signing on to fly with CAM, Lindbergh had applied to serve as a pilot on Richard E. Byrd's North Pole expedition, but apparently his bid came too late.
On April 13, 1926, Lindbergh executed the Post Office Department's Oath of Mail Messengers, and two days later he opened service on the new route. On two occasions, combinations of bad weather, equipment failure, and fuel exhaustion forced him to bail out on a night approach to Chicago; both times he reached the ground without serious injury and immediately set about ensuring that his cargo was located and sent on with minimum delay.
In mid-February 1927 he left for San Diego, California to oversee design and construction of the Spirit of St. Louis.
Financing the operation of the historic flight was a challenge due to Lindbergh's obscurity, but two St. Louis businessmen eventually obtained a $15,000 bank loan. Lindbergh contributed $2,000, $29,036.61 in 2020, of his own money from his salary as an Air Mail pilot and another $1,000 was donated by RAC. The total of $18,000 was far less than what was available to Lindbergh's rivals.
The group tried to buy an off-the-peg single or multi engine monoplane from Wright Aeronautical, then Travel Air, and finally the newly formed Columbia Aircraft Corporation, but all insisted on selecting the pilot as a condition of sale.
Finally, the much smaller Ryan Aircraft Company of San Diego agreed to design and build a custom monoplane for $10,580, and on February 25 a deal was formally closed.
More information: Deseret
Dubbed the Spirit of St. Louis, the fabric-covered, single-seat, single-engine Ryan NYP high-wing monoplane (CAB registration: N-X-211) was designed jointly by Lindbergh and Ryan's chief engineer Donald A. Hall.
The Spirit flew for the first time just two months later, and after a series of test flights Lindbergh took off from San Diego on May 10. He went first to St. Louis, then on to Roosevelt Field on New York's Long Island.
In the early morning of Friday, May 20, 1927, Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island. His monoplane was loaded with 1,704 litres of fuel that was strained repeatedly to avoid fuel line blockage. The fully loaded aircraft weighed 2,329 kg, with takeoff hampered by a muddy, rain-soaked runway. Lindbergh's monoplane was powered by a J-5C Wright Whirlwind radial engine and gained speed very slowly during its 7:52 a.m. takeoff, but cleared telephone lines at the far end of the field by about twenty feet [six meters] with a fair reserve of flying speed.
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Lindbergh's flight was certified by the National Aeronautic Association based on the readings from a sealed barograph placed in the Spirit.
Lindbergh received unprecedented adulation after his historic flight. People were behaving as though Lindbergh had walked on water, not flown over it.
The New York Times printed an above the fold, page-wide headline: LINDBERGH DOES IT! His mother's house in Detroit was surrounded by a crowd estimated at about 1,000. Countless newspapers, magazines, and radio shows wanted to interview him, and he was flooded with job offers from companies, think tanks, and universities.
Lindbergh spent his last years on the Hawaiian island of Maui, where he died of lymphoma on August 26, 1974, at age 72. He was buried on the grounds of the Palapala Ho'omau Church in Kipahulu, Maui. His epitaph, on a simple stone following the words Charles A. Lindbergh Born Michigan 1902 Died Maui 1974, quotes Psalm 139:9: ...If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea... C.A.L.
More information: Mantle Magazine
what you have wanted to do so badly.
You almost feel like you could fly
without the plane.
Charles Lindbergh
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