by Dan Hampton
For the first eleven hours Slim had held the very real reassurance that he was never too far from land. Over the Gulf of Maine, even along the Atlantic between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland he’d seen boats, shipping lanes, and people below. But no more. From now until Ireland, nearly 2,000 miles distant, there is nothing but ocean. His route lies over waters made too hazardous by weather or ice to be used as shipping lanes. As with an alpinist whose only safe path is up over the summit, not back, Lindbergh’s commitment would be total. A naval officer who reviewed his plan in San Diego had suggested he move the route farther south. Even though this would increase the distance, time in flight, and fuel required, the weather was milder so if something went wrong there was a much better chance of rescue. “You ought to carry a navigator on a flight like that,” he had added, concerned about the complexity and planned distance.
But Lindbergh had opted for the shortest route and least amount of weight—everything that could be sacrificed for more fuel on board and the most direct route. He knew, just as Coli and Nungesser had understood, that following the shortest distance meant less time, less fuel, and theoretically less risk. Still, the odds were long and the list of dangers nearly endless. Any one of a dozen calamities could have doomed the Frenchmen—and could still get him.
Slowly climbing up to 800 feet, away from the tea-colored waves, Slim runs an eye over the instruments then sets the throttle at 1,625 revolutions, which produces a 90 mph airspeed. Craning forward left and right, Lindbergh stares from both windows, but it is too dark to gauge the wind. He knows he should still be able to see whitecaps but, squinting now, all he can see is opaque darkness, fuzzy and thickening by the minute.
Fog.
Glancing at the altimeter he wonders whether the Spirit will be able to climb over it. Tilting his head back, Slim looks up through the skylight and is reassured by the stars. Maybe this is just surface fog—a mere nuisance since there are no landmarks out here to see anyway. We are children of the land, not of air or of water, Lindbergh thinks, realizing he is now both, but caught squarely between the two most dangerous environments on earth. Slim peers at the instruments.
The magnetic compass reads 087 degrees and the earth inductor is centered. Fuel pressure is good. Oil pressure reads 59 pounds and that’s fine. Best to check the magnetos now and make certain they’re both still generating the millions of sparks that keep the cylinders firing and Spirit flying. He reaches to the dial just below the periscope, grasping a two-inch lever between his thumb and forefinger. Moving it from BOTH to LEFT, Slim holds the switch in place and watches the tachometer. The needle barely drops, meaning the other magneto is carrying the full load. Switching back to BOTH, then to RIGHT, he again sees no significant movement and is satisfied but not surprised. No big drop in engine revolutions and no roughness. All is as it should be.
Not that the engine is a big concern. In Lindbergh’s opinion, and that of the other two teams trying to fly to Paris, the Wright Whirlwind is the finest aviation motor available. All the way from San Diego to New York he had been concerned about the details: how the engine would get serviced, where he would stay in New York, the new instruments he needed installed, and where the Spirit would be hangared until departure. They seem a trivial set of worries, but as Slim’s mind drifts he finds the past a welcome diversion from what lies ahead tonight.
AFTER THE SEVEN-HOUR flight from St. Louis to New York, Slim had circled overhead trying to figure out where to land. There was Mineola, the train tracks, and several surfaced east–west running roads. The whole area had been the Hempstead Plains Aerodrome until America joined the war in Europe during the spring of 1917, when it was renamed Hazelhurst Field.*
There had been two main airfields. Hazelhurst Number One would split into an East Field and West Field. The east side subsequently became Roosevelt, and the only facility with a paved runway. After the military relinquished control in 1920, three hundred acres of the old West Field were purchased by Glenn Curtiss and renamed Curtiss Field. Slim had craned left and right from the side windows, finally sighting the southernmost landing strip by the railroad tracks. This had to be Hazelhurst Number Two, now the U.S. Army’s Mitchel Field.* Yes . . . as he banked around, Slim had seen orderly lines of olive-drab painted aircraft, definitely military.
Landing at Curtiss Field on May 12, 1927, Lindbergh needn’t have worried about his reception. He’d taxied up to Hangar 16, somewhat taken aback by the crowd of several hundred and wondering what they were all there to see. In fact, they’d come to see him. He didn’t know it then, but newspapers had made much of his record-breaking 14-hour, 25-minute flight from San Diego to St. Louis, so public interest was intense. Lindbergh was the last of three pilots to arrive in New York, and certainly the least well known, but that was changing rapidly. In fact, it would be fair to say that he was unknown until word circulated about his night solo flight out from the West Coast.
The May 13, 1927 New York Times ran the following headline:
LINDBERGH ARRIVES AFTER RECORD HOPS
Air Mail Pilot Sets the Fastest Time of 21 Hours 20 Minutes From the Pacific Coast. FLEW 2,550 MILES ALONE With Aid of Compasses Only—Curtiss Field Crowds Cheer Daring Youth as He Lands. AIRPLANES AND PILOTS WHO ARE NEARLY READY FOR TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHTS.
While the Bellanca monoplane was receiving her last grooming in a closed hangar, before the door of which a guard was seated, a slim gray monoplane appeared in the sky yesterday and circled rapidly and with the grace of a bird over Curtiss Field, Long Island.
That feat alone made it impossible to dismiss the young mail pilot, who was immediately surrounded by photographers after landing. The newsreel cameras were swinging heavily back and forth on their tripods when Charles “Casey” Jones, Great War fighter pilot, air racer, and aviation legend, astounded the young pilot by pushing through the crowd and personally welcoming him to Long Island. Jones had become Curtiss-Wright’s chief pilot in 1926 and now also managed the airfield.
“We’ve got one of the hangars ready for you.” He gave the cockpit a quick, professional glance. “You’ve made a fast flight.”
Mechanics gathered around the Spirit. They left the big hangar doors open but strung a rope across the entrance to keep onlookers out, shielding the plane from the milling throng before carefully rolling it back into the hangar. Most of the rickety buildings on the field had obviously been built by the government and were left over from the war. A decade ago this whole area had belonged to the Army Signal Corps as Aviation Station Mineola.
A slender, balding man with a dark mustache approached, stuck out his hand, and said, “I’m Dick Blythe. I represent the Wright Aeronautical Corporation. They’ve instructed me to offer you all the help they can give.”
They did, too.
Ken Boedecker was a field rep appointed to ascertain Lindbergh’s needs and see to them. The Spirit had a dedicated mechanic, Ed Mulligan, assigned to check and recheck everything from the tires to the tail. When Slim returned from dinner that evening, Mulligan had the engine cowling and propeller off. He had found a crack in the spinner, the protective cone over the end of the propeller, and was replacing it free of charge. Brice Goldsborough from the Pioneer company was also there checking each instrument and installing the new earth inductor compass. In the morning Mulligan would lead lines from a pair of engine cylinders into the carburetor intake, thus heating it with hot exhaust gases.
More surprising to Lindbergh than the thorough work-up was the warm reception he got from his competitors for the Orteig. Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd, an exceedingly polite Virginia aristocrat, had, just over a year ago, reached the North Pole by air. On May 9, 1926, he and Floyd Bennett had taken off from Spitsbergen, Norway, and returned nearly sixteen hours later.* Instant national heroes, the pair was awarded Medals of Honor from President Calvin Coolidge on March 5, 1927, while Lindbergh was in San Diego.
But Byrd had his eyes on a greater prize. A highly experienced aviator, he was a 1908 U.S. Naval
Academy graduate and had planned the transatlantic flying boat operation that NC-4 completed in 1919. By the spring of 1927 he’d attracted the sponsorship of John D. Rockefeller Jr., the National Geographic Society, Dwight D. Morrow, and department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker†—resulting in a budget of at least $500,000 and a slick, professional organization. Through Wanamaker he leased Roosevelt Field, improved buildings, and graded the runway. A true gentleman, Commander Byrd was adamant that his competitors be granted use of any of the facilities and services at his disposal.
Nonetheless, he felt nearly ready, and on April 16, 1927, his team took off in their big Fokker trimotor, named America, for a series of flight tests. Tony Fokker himself was at the controls when the plane crashed on landing, flipping over, then sliding to a halt. Floyd Bennett got a piece of propeller through his chest and Byrd broke his left arm. Fokker and navigator George Noville were unharmed, but the aircraft required at least a month’s worth of repairs.
The other contender, Clarence Chamberlin’s Miss Columbia, was in a hangar only yards away, which was ironic since Slim had tried to buy that very plane back in February. The Wright Corporation owned the aircraft, a Bellanca WB-2, and decided the aircraft was more useful as a publicity showcase for its outstanding engines, so they refused to part with it. Not until Chamberlin and his copilot, Bert Acosta, set the world endurance record on April 12, 1927, did Wright sell the plane to entrepreneur Charles Levine.*
Levine, who had made his fortune by recycling surplus shell casings for their brass, was quarrelsome, domineering, and, like many of his generation, fascinated with flight. He had partnered with Giuseppe Bellanca, the brilliant Italian-born designer who built the first enclosed cabin monoplane five years earlier, to form the Columbia Aircraft Corporation. Levine had the money but was not a pilot, while Bellanca had the ability but no money or business acumen. His WB-2 design was so capable that Lindbergh, convinced that it represented his best choice, made two trips to New York in an attempt to purchase the aircraft. During Slim’s last visit in February 1927, Levine had agreed to sell it for $15,000, then added, astoundingly, “We will sell our plane, but of course we reserve the right to select the crew that flies it. You understand,” he continued smugly, “we cannot let just anybody pilot our airplane across the ocean.”
Recalling the moment years later, Lindbergh wrote that he was “dumbfounded,” and who could blame him? “If we buy a plane,” he had replied, “we’re going to control it, and we’ll pick our own crew. As far as I can see, we’d be paying $15,000 for the privilege of painting the name Spirit of St. Louis on the side.”
Understandably upset about wasting time and another two-thousand-mile train ride, Lindbergh retrieved his check and spent the rest of the day window-shopping along Fifth Avenue in an angry haze. He’d now been refused by Columbia, Wright, Fokker, and Travel Air. Slim was well aware of the competition and that time was running out. The Army Air Corps had purchased a trimotor Huff-Daland bomber for Wooster and Davis; René Fonck was building another Sikorsky for his reattempt at the prize; and Levine’s odd capriciousness was the only thing preventing Miss Columbia from making the Paris flight. In fact, the plane could have departed at any time in May.
Clarence Chamberlin, who was among the first to amble into Hangar 16 and greet Slim, had been ready to go since the April 12 endurance flight, but Levine was the problem. Confronting his team, Levine informed them that he couldn’t make up his mind who would fly Columbia to Paris, so it would be decided with a coin toss. Bert Acosta, a former Army aviator and Pulitzer Race winner, gave him a hard look and simply walked out. Levine, who didn’t care much for the mild-mannered Chamberlin, wanted to replace him as chief pilot with Lloyd Bertaud, but Bellanca, the co-partner and aircraft designer, refused to let the plane depart without Chamberlin. To further complicate matters, Levine had promised both pilots 50 percent of the Orteig winnings, plus life insurance policies for the flight, yet when he handed them their contracts neither was mentioned.
Instead, the forms granted Levine a one-year monopoly on all royalties from endorsements, appearances, and any other monies Columbia generated. The two pilots were to each receive $150 per month for the year following the flight, and could do nothing without Levine’s approval. Bertaud, who didn’t want to share the limelight with Chamberlin and refused to be coerced into a bad contract, hired a lawyer who promptly filed an injunction against the flight. Sheriff’s deputies were posted around the aircraft and Miss Columbia could not leave the ground until the matter was settled.
The court date was May 20, 1927—the day Charles Lindbergh lifted off for Paris.
NOW, EIGHT DAYS later as Slim stares out at the lonely black Atlantic, New York seems another world: chatting with the mechanics in the drafty hangar, eating a hot meal, writing letters. Right now it’s after 8 P.M. back in New York and there are folks dressed for dinner, or off to see a Broadway show, as he had done the night before takeoff. Others would be visiting with family, as he had the prior week. Arriving from Detroit, Lindbergh’s mother, Evangeline, had spent May 14 on Long Island, then left, satisfied that her son knew what he was doing. How strange was the fate that had put him here. Now he was alone in this frail cotton-and-steel cocoon over a dark ocean while millions of others around the world were warm and safe. People were doing all those mundane tasks that constitute most of life, and are so seldom appreciated unless one realizes it can all be lost. In his case, very quickly. Would anyone remember him? His whole life summed up in a few lines of newsprint to be read, then forgotten.
Shifting and stretching, Slim checks the gauges again. He’d left St. John’s on time with plenty of fuel and, while not on the planned course, he knew exactly where he was. It’s very dark outside, not that it matters. Seeing the ocean isn’t necessary and flying by instruments the whole night will certainly keep him awake. I’m giving up both land and day, he realizes. Now I’m heading eastward across two oceans, one of night and one of water. It will be a long night, but . . . Eyes narrowing, Slim catches something white moving on the surface below. Leaning farther left he squints at the ocean, trying to make it out. Whatever it is, it’s definitely white. The sail of a ship? No, of course not, this is 1927.
Iceberg.
There are several of them, like pale jagged teeth against blackened gums, and tendrils swirl around the tips. Fog again: floating gray wisps hanging over the dark water. Slim tilts his head back and looks up through the skylight. Plenty of stars above, though he knows nothing about celestial navigation. Besides, how would one fly while using a sextant, especially at night? He can find the North Star well enough, though. Straight up from the corner of the Big Dipper to the handle of the Little Dipper: Polaris. Since the star is directly over the pole, the earth rotates beneath it and the star never seems to move. But judging a cardinal direction, at night, by peering through the skylight of an aircraft at a star millions of miles away is hardly accurate. Still, Europe is a continent; how can he miss it if the Spirit flies east long enough?
Slim decides to use only the nose and fuselage tanks for the 100 gallons he ought to consume tonight. If the fuel pump were to malfunction then gravity would feed gas from the wings, and more weight above should help stabilize the plane in the event of turbulence. Of course if ice forms, the wings will be that much heavier, but he would have other problems then anyway. Lindbergh has used seventy-five gallons from each of the three wing tanks. That leaves at least 300 gallons between the other two tanks. I won’t run out of fuel over the ocean tonight. It was measured too carefully.
Settling down, Slim stretches his shoulders then leans back in the seat. The engine sounds smoother than at the beginning of the flight, he notices, and that’s good; it’s simply the smoothness of a well-cared-for engine during the early hours of its life. The Spirit’s Whirlwind Number 7331 was assembled by Wright’s youngest builder, Tom Rutledge, at their manufacturing facility in New Jersey, with a zero error tolerance from the specifications. Designed in 1925 by Charles Lawra
nce, Wright Aeronautical Corporation’s president, the engine measures forty-five inches in diameter and weighs 508 pounds.* The Whirlwind J-5C operates on a four-stroke cycle; pistons draw fuel and air into the nine cast-aluminum cylinders during the intake stroke, then compress it, combust the mixture, and finally expel the exhaust. The valves, which must operate flawlessly for millions of cycles, are made of tungsten steel and activated by rocker arms with enclosed push rods. Lindbergh had insisted on this point—exposed rods were easier to damage. L. B. Umlauf of Vacuum Oil, which supplied Spirit’s consumable fluids, stated that over the thirty-six-hour flight “[t]he engine had to make 14,472,000 explosions perfectly and smoothly.”
The Whirlwind draws in, or displaces, 788 cubic inches of fuel and air during each complete cycle, roughly equivalent to a late-model Great War fighter. Combustion, or exploding the fuel-air mixture in each cylinder, is what drives the engine. A motor’s efficiency is expressed as a ratio between the compressed volume in a cylinder and the empty volume. For the Whirlwind this is 5.2:1, greater than that in Eddie Rickenbacker’s Nieuport 28 fighter.† Wright’s mechanical perfection produced an engine that was averaging nine thousand operating hours between failures, more than a year of continuous use.
All Slim needed was forty hours.
The fog is now a thick gray ramp, sloping upward and forcing him into a gradual climb. He is passing 2,000 feet with the throttle set at 1,625 revolutions, and it is dark. No—black. Fog swirls a hundred feet beneath his wheels and he wonders how high it goes. Can he continue to get above the stuff, or will Spirit be forced to fly through it the rest of the night? The U.S. Weather Bureau’s Daily Weather Map showed a low-pressure area extending east from Newfoundland to the mid-Atlantic area. High pressure from the south was supposed to be pushing the front north, but what if it stalled? It could be a weaker weather system than forecasted and that would put him in the middle of it.