An ecstatic crowd of some 150,000 people had gathered at the French airfield to witness the historic moment.Īs the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic-and the first person to make the trip solo-Lindbergh became an instant worldwide celebrity. Louis landed safely at Paris’ Le Bourget airfield on May 21, 1927. The sleep-deprived Lindbergh later reported he had hallucinated about ghosts during the flight. He left the plane’s side windows open so that cold air and rain would keep him alert on the 33-1/2 hour flight. Louis took off from a muddy runway at Long Island’s Roosevelt Field on the morning of May 20, 1927. Lindbergh, at the age of 25, and the Spirit of St. Lindbergh had to use instruments to guide him, including a retractable periscope that he could slide out the left-side window for a limited forward view. One gas tank, mounted between the engine and the cockpit, blocked Lindbergh’s view through the windshield. Louis in honor of his financial backers, custom-built with extra fuel tanks in the plane’s nose and wings. Lindbergh had his plane, now named Spirit of St. The engine powering the plane was a Wright J5-C manufactured by Wright Aeronautical, the aircraft manufacturer founded by the Wright brothers. The customized plane, dubbed a Ryan NYP (for New York-Paris), had a longer fuselage, a longer wingspan and additional struts to accommodate the weight of extra fuel. Ryan Airlines of San Diego retrofitted one of their Ryan M-2 aircraft for Lindbergh’s flight. Louis, to compete for the Orteig Prize-a $25,000 reward put up by French hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first person to fly an airplane non-stop from New York to Paris. Lindbergh decided, with the backing of several people in St. Louis and Chicago as an air mail pilot in 1925.Įarlier pilots had crossed the Atlantic in stages, but most planes of the era weren’t equipped to carry enough fuel to make the trip without stopping to fuel up. He started flying routes between his home in St. He joined the United States Army Air Service in 1924, but the Army didn’t need active-duty pilots at the time, so Lindbergh soon returned to civilian aviation. Barnstormers were pilots who traveled the country performing aerobatic stunts and selling airplane rides. He got his start in aviation as a barnstormer. Lindbergh learned to fly planes in 1922 after quitting college. His family moved to Little Falls, Minnesota when he was a toddler, though Lindbergh spent much of his childhood in Washington, D.C., where his father, Charles August Lindbergh was a U.S. Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1902. Late in life, Lindbergh became a conservationist, arguing that he would rather have “birds than airplanes.”Ĭharles A. Some accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer. Five years later, Lindbergh’s toddler son was kidnapped and murdered in what many called “the crime of the century.” In the lead-up to World War II, Lindbergh was an outspoken isolationist, opposing American aid to Great Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany. Charles Lindbergh was an American aviator who rose to international fame in 1927 after becoming the first person to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean in his monoplane, Spirit of St.
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