Part 8 (1/2)
As he perfected his craft during the early 1920s Lindbergh notched up his hours working as a stunt pilot, barnstor rides to anyone with 5 or perforh”
Parachute-juarded as suicidal-especially when the plane was looping the loop-but the fearless Lindbergh insisted that with careful preparation and precautions the risks were e, he and a friend had aers at fifty feet; being wired up to a wing at a hundred htening prospect by comparison
When the St Louis air-h was chosen as the route's chief pilot He and two other aviators flew five round trips a week between Chicago and St Louis for the handsoe de Havilland observation bi-planes with single engines, fondly known as Fla them
Two hundred people came to St Louis's Lambert airfield to watch the dedication cereh took off on the city's first official ht He and his fellow pilots, postal clerks and executives ”felt ere taking part in an event which pointed the way toward a new and h's disappointment, popular interest declined after that first burst of enthusiasht combined ”science, freedoelical about the future of aviation, taking i part of ”h, an air-ht in an airplane at a county fair were diverting gi new future
Lindbergh and his tea distances in uncertain conditions in insecure planes To begin with, they fleithout night-flying equip only a pocket torch (”pilot furnished,” Lindbergh wryly noted) and an ereen navigation lights Despite these conditions Lindbergh's St Louis-Chicago run had the best record a 99 percent of their scheduled flights
Several tih was forced to s on to Midwestern cornfields and cow pastures He became known as the only pilot to have successfully saved his own life four ti plane His forratulate hih you are favored by the angels”
Although Lindbergh loved the ca spirit of mail-route life, he was soonthe saes for hi the Atlantic In 1919 two English pilots, John Alcock and Arthur Brown, had flown the 2,000 miles fro, a French-born hotelier living in New York, had focused pilots' attention on the 3,600- a prize of 25,000 for the first non-stop flight in either direction
By 1926 several failed atteht he knehy: the planes were too heavy, carrying too ines and too many pilots and crew nificent triple-engine bi-plane upholstered with red leather and equipped with a bed and a batch of croissants; only the two pilots had survived the crash at take-off Lindbergh reckoned that the reater the possibility of failure What he wanted was siine, one pilot”
Money was his first objective His own savings of 2,000 wouldn't cover an aircraft engine, let alone an entire plane E the as-yet-untapped commercial possibilities of air travel and its benefits to St Louis in particular if it were to becoh persuaded a consortiuht to fly and his for officer, and supported by the St Louis Chamber of Commerce and the St Louis Globe-Deuarantee him the 15,000 he esti would, he promised, ”promote nationwide interest in aeronautics, demonstrate [the] perfection of modern equip a plane was h ell known in Midwestern andcircles, but on the East Coast, where the major aeronautical companies were based, he was a nobody Fokker turned his request down flat They told him he would need at least 90,000 to buy and outfit one of their specially made planes, but even if he could afford their fee they would reserve the right to veto any pilot atteht And only a fool, they iines
Lindbergh deliberately set up his appoint a five-dollar long-distance telephone call froirl at the desk” He invested in a tailor-made suit and a new blue overcoat and suitcase for his trip to New Jersey where the co The Wright executive was friendly but told hiht-Bellanca, was only a prototype He suggested Lindbergh speak to its designer, Guiseppe Bellanca, and arranged aBellanca was encouraging but, lacking his own production facilities, could only offer Lindbergh the chance to buy a plane in an existing three-et
Several ain The aggressive young owner of the prototype in which Lindbergh had been interested illing to sell it for 15,000 Although Lindbergh hesitated over the price, his backers agreed to cover the cost But as he held out the check, Charles Levine, the plane's owner, added a caveat: he, too, reserved the right to choose the plane's crew ”You understand we cannot let just anybody pilot our airplane across the ocean”
Furious, Lindbergh had just one option left: the tiny Ryan Aeronautical Co planes from war-surplus aircraft parts He went to California to discuss the plane he hoped they could build hio and co field, no hangar, no sound of engines war up; and the unmistakable smell of dead fish from a nearby cannery [s,” but Lindbergh was iht-Whirlwind engine and any extras included at cost price, Ryan would charge Lindbergh and his sponsors 10,580 to build the Spirit of St Louis Spirit of St Louis
While his plane was being built Lindbergh spent his dayshis route (using fifty-cent drugstoreendless ”To do” lists He worked closely with Ryan's chief engineer, Donald Hall, toto his long-distance flight plans and his own experience
Flight efficiency was to be the primary consideration, then safety in case of a crash, and finally Lindbergh's own co equipasoline tanks-was jettisoned for the sake of weight Every pound savedLindbergh turned down the idea of an additional cockpit because the space could be used to store asoline than an extra man”
The empty plane, made of spruce and piano wire and covered in cotton finished with cellulose acetate dope in silver-grey, weighed 2150lb, of which five hundred pounds was the air-cooled, 223-hp radial Wright-Whirlwind propeller engine stored in the nose of the fuselage ”Nine delicate, fincovered cylinders of aluh ”On this intricate perfection I'm to trust my life across the Atlantic Ocean”
The Spirit of St Louis Spirit of St Louis stood just under ten feet tall She was nearly twenty-eight feet long, with a wingspan of forty-six feet, and carried 450 gallons of gasoline and forty spare pounds of oil She was a s could cope better with ice in the freezing nighttih's seat in the cockpit was ht wicker stood just under ten feet tall She was nearly twenty-eight feet long, with a wingspan of forty-six feet, and carried 450 gallons of gasoline and forty spare pounds of oil She was a s could cope better with ice in the freezing nighttih's seat in the cockpit was ht wicker
Her accident equip ten pounds; a knife; some flares andequipment; a hacksaw; some ”awful” cru twenty pounds, was rejected-itwater Lindbergh thought would weigh too much; he ordered the prototype of a newly invented cup that would convert h hihing a sli suitnine pounds, specially chosen because it would keep hi suit he would wear arht jacket and a red-and-blue-striped tie His vulnerability on the flight, alone and out of all contact, would be intense ”For the first tieline wrote to him, ”I realize that Columbus also had a mother”
Spirit was ready towards the end of April 1927 Inspired by Lindbergh's quiet deter to ht, Ryan's thirty-fivehours, often without pay, to finish her as quickly as possible Lindbergh spent ten days perforhts was ready towards the end of April 1927 Inspired by Lindbergh's quiet deter to ht, Ryan's thirty-fivehours, often without pay, to finish her as quickly as possible Lindbergh spent ten days perforhts Spirit Spirit's top speed was 128 allons of fuel He was delighted to find that her performance was far beyond what he had hoped for
Further encouragement had come that March with news of the arrival in Paris of a French team from Tehran, a non-stop journey of 3,200 miles, admittedly overland In April infor the New York-Paris flight Two of the US teams, a 100,000 Fokker and the Bellanca owned by Charles Levine (who had decided to use his own pilots to make his own bid for the prize), had encountered proble for repairs to be co aces had crashed during their final test flight and been killed; a two-ion had also crashed, killing both pilots Lindbergh was shaken by his fellow pilots' bad luck, but the fact that his rivals' planes were large, ine craft confirmed his conviction that the Spirit of St Louis Spirit of St Louis was the airplane best fitted to successfully fly the Atlantic was the airplane best fitted to successfully fly the Atlantic
On 10 May Lindbergh took off froht in St Louis to consult with his backers about the co the records for the fastest times from the Pacific coast to St Louis, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts Two days earlier two French flying aces had taken off for New York froine bi-plane, L'oiseau blanc L'oiseau blanc By the ti Island on the afternoon of 12 May, hopes of the French tea
The two A to ars, and Lindbergh was surprised to find a spirit of cooperation and shared endeavor aineers and aviation co to help him when he wanted to find a plane to fly across the Atlantic, or ere attached to one of the other tea repairs to Lindbergh's instru weather infor him free use of their runways Men who had been far-off heroes to Lindbergh-one of those who had developed the Whirlwind engine in his plane, the French flying ace Rene Fonck, and aircraft ar to wish hie of his decision to fly solo all co journalistic attention for the first ti for the Orteig prize At press conferences he was asked questions like, ”Have you got a sweetheart?” and ”How do you feel about girls?” Reporters called hi to steal a picture of hih locked his door So many journalists crowded the airfield when he landed after one test flight that he broke his tail skid trying to avoid them
Thirty thousand enthusiasts caht He received hundreds of good-luck letters and telegra to interest hi he would post their letters in Paris Interested grandees like Theodore Roosevelt Jr and Harry Guggenheih fended off requests fro to make hioodbye she refused to kiss hi that they cahs' independent, non-conforration lobby's idea of ideal A anyway The usually unperturbed Lindbergh was angry ”They didn't care how ht, as long as they got their pictures and their stories”
After ten days, Lindbergh heard that the overcast weather was forecast to break the next day and he decided to leave the following uessed would wait until they knew for sure that the cloud cover was clearing Only aexperience in all weathers, would have dared start his journey in such uncertain conditions
After a sleepless night, Lindbergh took off fro of 20 May in front of a crowd of several hundred Spirit Spirit, fully laden with 451 gallons of gasoline, bounced along the runway and cleared the telegraph wires at the end of the field by just twenty feet A newspaper plane flew alongside hi Island Sound News ca bets on Lindbergh's arrival in Paris because they considered he had too sli it Fortunately, without a radio he would not have heard it
The thirty-five- Island and Connecticut was the longest expanse of water Lindbergh had yet flown over When he reached the Atlantic coast, ”looking ahead at the unbroken horizon and liance in atteht” His little Spirit Spirit rese more than ”a butterfly blown out to sea” but to hi partner in adventure than amore than ”a butterfly blown out to sea” but to hi partner in adventure than a machine of cloth and steel”
America held its breath ”Alone?' demanded Harold Anderson in the New York Sun New York Sun ”Is he alone at whose right side rides Courage, with Skill within the cockpit and Faith upon the left? Does solitude surround the brave when Adventure leads the way and Ambition reads the dials? Is there no co and the darkness is ht by Enterprise?Alone? With what other coiven?”
For the next twenty-eight hours Lindbergh fought off sleep, kept awake by the instability of his plane-”this little box with fabric walls”-an unexpected blessing because it meant he could not switch off for a second He preferred not to eat, knowing that his empty stomach would also keep him alert, and kept the plastic s out of their fra the barrier they would create between him and the outside elements, the crystal ”communion of water, land and sky”
He was acutely conscious of his vulnerability as he flew over Newfoundland ”Nine barrels of gasoline and oil, wrapped up in fabric; two hundred and twenty horsepower, harnessed by a layer of cloth-vulnerable to a pin prick, yet protecting an airplane and its pilot on a flight across an ocean, between the continents-suspended at this id, northern land”
And yet there was also a strange sense of security and peace Life had suddenly become wholly simple His cockpit was tailored to him ”like a suit of clothes”: ”Each dial and lever is in the proper place for glance or touch; and the slightest pressure on the controls brings response” The only thing he had to do was fly, and that felt ”like living in a her surrounded by the luxury and countless responsibilities of a city residence” He becas-the weld , a dot of paint on the altirandeur of the world outside The nearness of death The longness of life” He was utterly alone
The urge to sleep was strongest in the dark, when he was over open water It felt like a leaden coat pressing down upon his shoulders He forced himself to squeeze his dry eyes open and shut, to sta the tiny plane, to flex his craainst sleep-the power of his mind over his body Relentlessly he made himself think of possible probleencies, checked and rechecked his route, envisaged hoould cope if he crashed
Throughout the freezing, hostly spirits crowded around hiers,” speaking intangibleadvice, reassuring hih accepted them as nor only in ”this strange, living dream” The next day he could not rees of land appeared on the horizon in front of his For a tih the skylight at the stars just visible in the thickening night fog and theperilous ice-storms He was entirely ”conscious of the nitude of the world”
”Aren't s fully as reh wondered ”So feels too God-like to be attained by ht, should he survive it, pressed upon hi what I have seen, without feeling what I have felt? Is that true of all things we call huress-do the Gods retire as co for dawn in the un of his journey (and the third without sleep), he felt senseless, acco only what he needed to do to survive in a state of seht, Lindbergh re salts in his medical kit He broke open one of the capsules but was so out of touch with reality that he could not sh he was hanging in space, divorced froers of land: a porpoise leaping through the water, then a gull, then the black specks of fishi+ng boats-and at last the ereen fields of the west coast of Ireland
When he reached the mouth of the Seine nearly five hours later he re since leaving New York Sostore sandwiches as he left and he atte them carefully away His mouth was too dry to s and he didn't want to taint his landing with discarded sandrappings He flew over Paris, which looked like a ”lake of stars,” and circled the Eiffel Tower (then the tallesthis wings
Lindbergh's et airfield on the outskirts of Paris, just over thirty-three hours after he had lifted off Where the ehts, di of pairs of lights reaching off into the distance Flying past a second tihts of thousands of Parisians coreet him
In the crowds beneath hi at the crowds, the colored flares and the great floodlights sweeping the sky Lindbergh's engine whirred like a toy as he circled the field in preparation for landing Lost and then captured in the leah water A mood of suspense built as they waited for his approach ”Then sharp swift in the gold glare of the searchlights a small white hawk of a plane swoops hawk-like down and across the field-C'est lui Lindberg [sic], LINDBERG! And there is a pandemonium, wild animals let loose and a sta like s of the Spirit of Saint-Louisscratching and tearing” gleah water A mood of suspense built as they waited for his approach ”Then sharp swift in the gold glare of the searchlights a small white hawk of a plane swoops hawk-like down and across the field-C'est lui Lindberg [sic], LINDBERG! And there is a pandemonium, wild animals let loose and a sta like s of the Spirit of Saint-Louisscratching and tearing”
The 150,000-strong crowd surged on to the runway as Spirit Spirit landed and the h out of the plane He said later that ”it was like drowning in a hu how disorientated Lindbergh must be, quickly threw a coat over his shoulders, took off his helmet and placed it on the head of a nearby American reporter, and spirited hi his substitute to the croho carried the wrong man triumphantly towards the official reception coh's worries about not having a French visa; France was his, they said Afterthe American ambassador, at whose house he was to stay, his new friends bundled him into a car bound for Paris by back roads landed and the h out of the plane He said later that ”it was like drowning in a hu how disorientated Lindbergh must be, quickly threw a coat over his shoulders, took off his helmet and placed it on the head of a nearby American reporter, and spirited hi his substitute to the croho carried the wrong man triumphantly towards the official reception coh's worries about not having a French visa; France was his, they said Afterthe American ambassador, at whose house he was to stay, his new friends bundled him into a car bound for Paris by back roads Spirit Spirit was left under aruard to protect her frouard to protect her from souvenir hunters
News of the hero's safe arrival ired to New York and bells rang out across the country That night, at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, a new version of the Charleston, the Lindy Hop, was danced in Lindbergh's honor to acco screams of ”Lindy's done it, Lindy's done it!”
Aet back to Paris through the celebrating throngs that Lindbergh had eaten his first ) and had a bath by the time his host arrived hoot into bed, sixty-three hours after he had last slept
Herrick cabled Evangeline Lindbergh in Detroit: ”Warratulations Stop Your incouest Stop He is in fine condition and sleeping sweetly under Uncle Saeline's usual restraint failed her With tears in her eyes, she said that although she had never doubted that her son would complete his journey, ”I am so happy that it is over, more happy than I can ever tellHe has acco of his life, and I am proud to be the mother of such a boy”
The next few days-and weeks, and months-passed in a whirl When, next afternoon, Herrick led Lindbergh on to a balcony to wave to the cheering crowds below, he realized that his flight had transfored twenty-five, he had become public property Everywhere he went people pressed forward to shake his hand, to touch his clothes, to congratulate and applaud him From then on, he reflected years later, life ”could hardly have beenif I had landed on another planet instead of at Paris”