The Flight

by Dan Hampton

  * Roosevelt would also be the first U.S. president to ride in an automobile; a Columbia Electric Victoria.

  * Buckman also owned the hotel that housed the Lindberghs, and his daughter was married to C. A. Lindbergh’s younger brother Frank.

  * The Sixth Congressional district tallied 16,762 for C. A. Lindbergh against Buckman’s 13,115.

  * Lindbergh would later lend the Spirit of St. Louis to the Smithsonian, where it was put on public display on May 13, 1928, and still resides today.

  † Later known as Sidwell Friends School. Among his classmates were President Teddy Roosevelt’s sons, Kermit and Quentin, the latter of whom would posthumously give his name to Roosevelt Field on Long Island.

  ‡ Likely a Curtiss Model D biplane.

  * Wartime censors exaggerated the flu virus’s impact in neutral Spain to keep up morale in Britain, France, and the United States.

  * Commonwealth Pier in Boston was likely the main North American hub for the virus’s dispersion.

  † Before the epidemic this was about fifty-three years of age for an adult male.

  ‡ Griffith’s The Clansman was based on a 1905 book and play of the same name by Thomas Dixon Jr., a Southern Baptist minister.

  § The first amendment in forty-three years. The Fifteenth Amendment, passed in 1870, granted suffrage to black males.

  * Marc Mitscher would later command the aircraft carrier USS Hornet during the battle of Midway, and retired as an admiral. Jack Towers, piloting NC3, would command the very first American aircraft carrier, the USS Langley, and would also rise to the rank of admiral.

  * Three weeks later, on July 2, 1919, the British airship R34 would make the first nonstop east-west crossing from East Fortune, Scotland, to Long Island, New York. It landed on Roosevelt Field after a 108-hour, 12-minute flight. Zachary Lansdowne, future commander of the USS Shenandoah, was aboard.

  * Fisher Island, about three miles offshore from Miami, was named for him. In 1925 he traded the island to William K. Vanderbilt II for a yacht.

  † Formerly the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation, the name was changed when the company was acquired by aviation legend Ray H. Page on August 6, 1920.

  * Before metallic skins were widely used, fabric-covered metal or wood framing had to be strengthened and tightened using brushed-on lacquer, or “dope.”

  * It has actually been measured as far as 1,200 miles from the geographic pole.

  * Cape St. Mary’s.

  † Brier Island. Home to renowned sailor Joshua Slocum, who completed the first solo circumnavigation of the globe in a 36-foot sloop in 1898.

  * Colonel Virginius Clark, a 1907 Naval Academy graduate who later transferred to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. His design was an adaptation of the highly successful Gottingen airfoil used by Tony Fokker for the German Air Service during the Great War.

  * Scintilla was originally a Swiss firm and their magnetos generated an exceptionally fat, reliable spark at high speeds, ideal for aircraft engines.

  † Cosmoline is basically a brown, waxy grease used to protect or preserve.

  * This is exactly what happened; the nose tank actually held 88 gallons, the main tank 210, and the three wing tanks together 152 gallons, for a total true capacity of 450 gallons.

  * This would never prevent dehydration and, in fact, didn’t work. Lindbergh always believed it did, though, and carried an Armbrust cup on his subsequent flights.

  * Portuguese explorer João Fagundo named them the Virgin Islands, after “St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins,” just as Columbus did for those in the Caribbean. The islands were also a smuggler’s haven and did quite well during the U.S. Prohibition years, often bringing in more than one million gallons of whiskey annually.

  † It is also likely that Eriksson, and other Vikings, made repeated visits to North America around A.D. 1000. Ivory statuettes, runestones, and even a coin have been found, though traditional historians are reluctant to confirm their authenticity.

  * One of these, Oderin Island, was a base for Peter Easton. Very likely the most successful privateer turned pirate of all time, he was never captured and in fact retired to France with his loot as the Marquis of Savoy.

  † The town is Placentia. Fourteen years later Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt would meet in Little Placentia Bay to discuss fighting Nazi Germany and to sign the Atlantic Charter. The northern spit of land is Argentia, which briefly became the largest American naval base outside the United States before closing in 1994.

  * St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, and the Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, respectively. Both were damaged by the Great Fire of 1892 and had been rebuilt by 1927.

  * Cabot Tower atop Signal Hill. On December 12, 1901, Marconi flew a kite some five hundred feet from this tower and received a wireless transmission that had originated in Poldhu, Cornwall, more than 2,200 miles away.

  * Great Britain ceased making payments on her $4.4 billion Great War debt in 1934, though she paid off her loans from World War II in 2006.

  * Charles Lindbergh was Time’s first “Man of the Year.”

  † Renamed the Holland Tunnel, it opened on November 13, 1927.

  * Coastal shoreline only. Does not include tidal or freshwater coastlines.

  * The Roxy contained a 118-piece orchestra and boasted 6,200 seats. It was air-conditioned and was among the first theaters with drinking fountains.

  * He was later identified as Carlo Valdinoci, a twenty-four-year-old anarchist who enjoyed making bombs, though apparently without much success.

  * Main Street was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1921, but the decision was overturned.

  * Massachusetts ultimately executed Sacco and Vanzetti by electrocution on August 23, 1927, as Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis to Minneapolis during his tour of the United States.

  * Most professional military officers could see a reckoning with Japan; among others, Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton Jr. also predicted the attack.

  * Named in honor of Lieutenant Leighton Wilson Hazelhurst, the third U.S. Army pilot killed in an aviation accident. The Hempstead Plain is also home to Belmont Park, the longest Thoroughbred racetrack in the world.

  * Named for former New York City mayor John Purroy Mitchel, killed during pilot training in 1918.

  * There are various opinions as to whether Byrd and Bennett actually reached the Pole.

  † Ironically, Lindbergh would marry Morrow’s daughter Ann on May 27, 1929.

  * Fifty-one hours, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds.

  * Lawrance had been a racing car motor designer until World War I. His Lawrance Aero Engine Corporation produced the only air-cooled aircraft engine in the United States by the end of the war.

  † The Nieuport 28 generally used a Gnome 9N rotary engine with a compression ratio of 4.85:1.

  * Essentially a turn indicator is a wheel that remains balanced regardless of the position or movement of the frame. Spirit’s instruments mounted the gyro inside gimbal rings that isolated it, but allowed for the measurement of exterior forces, which were then displayed to the pilot.

  * The alloy also contains 1.25 percent iron, manganese, and silicon, respectively.

  * So named as it contained a tightly coiled spring that only required winding once every eight days.

  * Mercury was used because it remains liquid under standard temperature and pressure conditions: 273.15 degrees Kelvin and 14.504 pounds per square inch of pressure.

  * In fact, his actual fuel state was much better. By this point in the flight Lindbergh had approximately 265 gallons remaining, but with no fuel gauge (which he considered unreliable) there was no way for him to know that.

  * Lindbergh wasn’t the first to encounter “land” so far out to sea. From the years 1325 to 1865 an island named Bracile, or Brasil, was erroneously depicted hundreds of miles west of Ireland. However, Rockall Islet does exist, a tiny granite tooth emerging from the North Atlantic, but it is considerably northeast
of Lindbergh’s position.

  * Forty-five hours, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds.

  * His actual ground speed was faster than this; approximately 135 miles per hour, and his position was much closer to Ireland—about 250 miles. Lindbergh was quite correct in being conservative here, especially given all the variables at this point in his flight.

  * Lindbergh didn’t know it at the time but he was over the Porcupine Banks, only 100 miles or so west of Ireland. The water looked bluer here because it was shallow relative to the deeper mid-Atlantic.

  * These are the Blasket Islands. During Spain’s ill-fated invasion of England in 1588, nearly 20 percent of the 130-ship Spanish Armada was lost on the Irish coast, many of them among the Blaskets.

  * More commonly spelled “Valentia,” on the 1927 Mercator chart used by Lindbergh it was labeled “Valencia.”

  * This is Knightstown, the largest populated area on Valentia Island, though Lindbergh didn’t know the name at the time, and most likely didn’t care.

  * Lindbergh’s landfall was within fifty miles of Carrigaholt, where L’Oiseau Blanc was last seen heading out to sea.

  * Galley Head lighthouse, County Cork.

  * During his flight tests in San Diego, Lindbergh calculated a stall range of 49 to 71 miles per hour depending upon gross weight.

  * Trevose Head. The rocks appear black due to millions of attached mussels.

  * Trevone, Mother Ivey’s, and Harlyn Bays. The Camel Estuary is farther east, opening into St. George’s Channel near Padstow.

  * Bodmin Moor.

  † Rame Head.

  * Plymouth Hoe and Smeaton’s Tower. The breakwater was a marvelous engineering feat for its time, using more than four million tons of stone and completed in 1814.

  * The promontory is Start Point, from Anglo-Saxon steort, meaning “tail.” The pebbled beach on Lyme Bay is Slapton Sands, future site of practice landings for the 1944 invasion of Normandy.

  * Lindbergh passed within five miles of Ver-sur-Mer where, in forty-one days, Commander Richard Byrd’s America would crash offshore. Nearly seventeen years later, during June 1944, these same beaches would be the scene of the greatest seaborne invasion in history.

  * Most of the world’s nations originally established meridians through their large cities, though this was theoretically resolved during the 1884 International Meridian Conference. France abstained, refusing to abandon her own meridian until 1914. Incidentally, the French liner La Touraine sent ice field warnings to the Titanic using longitudes based on the Paris Meridian, so they were of no use.

  † The famous Promenade des Planches. Deauville had long been a glitzy vacation spot and was well known for its horse culture. F. Scott Fitzgerald specifically mentions the resort in The Great Gatsby and Lindbergh would move his family to France in 1938, to Île Illiec, off the Breton coast.

  * Constructed by the Bureau of Air Commerce, large concrete arrows were also erected next to the towers showing the direction to the next beacon, though their usefulness at night was somewhat doubtful.

  * In 1828 Paris installed gas lamps along the Champs-Élysées, the first city in Europe to do so.

  * The dark area is the Bois de Boulogne, bordered to the north by the Champs-Élysées. The unmistakable, brightly lit wheel is the Arc de Triomphe, just north of the Eiffel Tower.

  * The Trocadero Palace.

  † Beacons along airways were red and those at landing fields were green.

  * Le Bourget is actually about 6.5 miles from the center of the city, so Lindbergh would have been overhead in less than five minutes. He was temporarily confused because of the inaccurate information he’d received about the field’s location.

  * The village is Gonesse, where Nungesser and Coli detached their landing gear just after takeoff on May 8, 1927.

  † This is the future site of Charles de Gaulle Airport. It opened in March 1974, five months before Lindbergh’s passing.

  * The Spirit of St. Louis touched down, and stayed down, at 10:22 Paris time. Flight duration was 33 hours, 30 minutes, 29.8 seconds as verified by the PN7 barograph and recorded by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

  † The crowd, many of whom had been waiting for hours, could not be contained. They broke down and flattened the eight-foot chain link fence protecting the airfield, and overwhelmed the guards.

  * He has been alternately identified as a reporter or a furrier shopping for rabbit pelts. Raymond Fredette, in The Making of a Hero, states that Wheeler was a Brown University student traveling in Europe, and this seems most likely.

  † Weiss was not the commandant of Le Bourget, which was a civilian field, though the military held sway over half of it. “Commandant” is a French Air Force rank, equivalent to a major.

  * At odds with modern perceptions of the times, Oregon, Wyoming, and Ohio had the highest divorce rate per 1,000 marriages.

  * Stewart would portray Lindbergh in Billy Wilder’s 1957 classic film, The Spirit of St. Louis.

  † Translated and printed on May 24, 1927, in the New York Times.

  * Remarkably, the hangar is still in use today. It is labeled H5 and belongs to Advanced Air Support, a luxury private charter outfit at Le Bourget. AAS also proudly advertises the fact that the facility housed the Spirit of St. Louis.

  * 110th Observation Squadron, 35th Air Division, Missouri National Guard.

  * They actually landed 100 miles short of Berlin, in Lutherstadt-Eisleben, with mechanical issues. Nevertheless, the 3,911-mile flight was a new nonstop distance record.

  * The Memphis passed very close to, if not directly over, the spot where Billy Mitchell’s bombers sank the battleship Ostfriesland in 1921.

  * The giant airship USS Los Angeles was expected, but remained at Lakehurst due to high winds.

  * Charles Furnas and Léon Delagrange, respectively.

  * Lindbergh did not choose the title and always disliked it. The publishing house, and most likely his editor, Fitzhugh Green, picked the name.

  * Eight civilians have been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, but it is now exclusively a military decoration unless authorized by a Special Act of Congress.

  * This tour ended at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C., with Lindbergh donating his plane to the Smithsonian Institution. In her short career, the Spirit of St. Louis flew 174 flights, totaling 489 hours, 28 minutes in the air.

  * Transcontinental would merge with Maddux Air Lines in 1929 and Western Air in 1930 to become Transcontinental & Western Air (T&WA, later shortened to TWA).

  † H. Norman Schwarzkopf was chief of the New Jersey state police, and responsible for the investigation. Al Capone, from prison, offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the baby’s safe return.

  * There were exceptions, of course. Jimmy Stewart, who idolized Lindbergh, refused to “play war” on a movie set and flew twenty-five combat missions in Europe. Fellow actor Lee Marvin, a combat Marine, was badly wounded on Saipan. On the other hand, there were those like John Wayne who, because he was married with children (like millions who fought anyway), sought and obtained a 3-A deferment, thus remaining clear of combat for the entire war. Wayne would be booed by wounded soldiers when he visited a hospital during a photo op.

  † VMF is the designation for a U.S. Marine Fighter Squadron.

  * Armstrong also carried two pieces of the original Wright Flyer with him; a sliver of the left propeller and a bit of wing fabric.