Lindbergh

by A. Scott Berg

  Despite the press’s embellishing of Lindbergh’s archaeological work, he always kept its value in proportion. More than once he was approached by admirers who asked him to tell about the lost Mayan city he had “discovered,” to which he would reply, “As a matter of fact I located a small ruined wall almost covered by tropical vegetation.”

  While spending much of his time exploring the past, Charles Lindbergh’s most far-reaching scientific investigations that year were aimed toward the future. Months earlier, on a solo flight in his Ryan monoplane between New York and St. Louis, his mind had begun to wander. Bucking a strong headwind at eighty-five miles per hour, he considered the great human milestones in transportation. “Through the centuries,” he realized, “man had developed the wheel to travel over land, the hull to sail across water, and the wing to fly through air.” Advancing his thought, he asked himself if man could ever enter space. “If so,” he thought, “obviously we would have to overcome the need for wings and the limitations of propellers.” Lindbergh wondered from whom he could learn the essentials for sending man into space.

  The Lindberghs relaxed for a day in August 1929, at Falaise on Long Island. There occurred one of those serendipitous moments which, in Lindbergh’s words, “so often bend the trends of life and history.” While Anne had excused herself to write letters upstairs, Charles and the Guggenheims retired to the large living room, where the men invariably discussed aviation. Lindbergh was standing by a window—looking at the Sound and comparing an airplane’s speed with a slow string of barges—when Carol suddenly exclaimed, “Listen to this!” She proceeded to read aloud from an article in Popular Science Monthly about a recent explosion in Worcester, Massachusetts.

  Robert Hutchings Goddard, the forty-seven-year-old Chairman of the Physics Department at Clark University, had spent his sickly childhood reading the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Finding physics a creative outlet for his own active imagination, he became obsessed with formulating a method of reaching extreme altitudes. He studied at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, earned a doctorate locally at Clark University, and did postgraduate research at Princeton. He kept his thoughts about rockets under his hat as much as possible. But, he quickly learned, experimentation in this nascent field of study cost a lot of money and inevitably attracted a lot of local attention.

  The press superficially summarized his work as an attempt to reach the moon. Worse for Goddard than being dismissed as a lunatic was the undue attention being placed on his experimentation, which stripped him of the privacy necessary for trial and error. Cadging grants in a new field of study was difficult enough without having ridicule attached to his work.

  Goddard had won a $5,000 grant from the Smithsonian Institution, and a few thousand dollars more from Clark University; but his experiments with gasoline and liquid oxygen quickly burned through his funds. The year Charles Lindbergh first dreamed of flying from New York to Paris, Robert Goddard had launched a ten-foot-tall contraption of steel tubing forty-one feet into the air in 2.5 seconds over a trajectory of 184 feet. Three years later, on his Aunt Effie Ward’s farm, in Auburn, he sent another slightly larger model soaring—twenty feet above its sixty-foot launching tower, at which point it veered right and rose another ten feet, landing 171 feet away. This was the projectile—only some 200,000 miles short of the moon, he told journalists in an attempt to lead them from covering his experiments—that Carol Guggenheim had read about.

  Upon hearing about the missile, Lindbergh called on the Du Pont Company, among the world’s largest manufacturers of chemicals and explosives, and arranged a private audience. On November 1, 1929, he flew to Wilmington, Delaware, where Henry Du Pont had gathered twenty of his organization’s leading executives, engineers, and scientists. “Might rockets,” Lindbergh asked, “be used to get far out into space or as power- plants for aircraft?” The scientists were skeptical, explaining that the necessary fuel would be too heavy, the temperatures too high, the combustion time too short.

  Realizing that his vision was beyond their present horizons, Lindbergh left the group with a simple problem to keep their minds on the subject of rockets. As aviation was just emerging from a period marked by frequent engine failures, he asked if a small rocket could not be devised, one that could be “attached to an airplane for emergency use in case of engine failure on take-off.” A single minute of such reserve power, Lindbergh indicated, might be enough to avert a serious crash. Du Pont’s chemical director conducted an investigation of the problem which led Henry Du Pont to conclude that it was not worth further consideration. Lindbergh still had not encountered anybody who shared his belief that “rockets would be practical either for aircraft or for flights into space.”

  In the meantime, he learned that Professor Goddard was a highly regarded physicist, not the mad scientist many had suggested. On a gray afternoon at the end of November, Goddard answered his telephone only to find Charles Lindbergh at the other end. Lindbergh proclaimed interest in Goddard’s work in rocketry and asked if they might discuss it in person. Goddard waited until dinner that night before nonchalantly telling his wife, Esther, of his unusual call. “Of course, Bob,” she replied. “And I had tea with Marie, the Queen of Rumania.”

  On Saturday, November 23, 1929, Lindbergh drove to Worcester in his 1927 Franklin sedan. The wary Goddard trusted his visitor on sight, showing him his laboratory and taking him back to his house, where Esther Goddard brought out some milk and a homemade chocolate cake. They sat on the porch for hours, while Goddard did most of the talking—disclosing results of his experiments with paper-thin Duralumin combustion chambers instead of firebrick and liquid fuel instead of explosive powder. “I was tremendously impressed with Goddard,” Lindbergh recalled forty years later, “his accomplishments, his knowledge, and his confidence in the future of rocket flight.” When Lindbergh asked if he thought it possible to build a rocket that could reach the moon, Goddard said yes, by building a multistage missile, a patent for which he already held. But, Goddard added with a grin suggesting an even wilder concept, “it might cost a million dollars to do so.”

  Short of that, Lindbergh asked Goddard what he would require to reach more immediate goals. With $25,000 a year for four years, Goddard replied, he could set up a laboratory and launching tower somewhere far from neighbors’ complaints, police restrictions, or snooping journalists. He could then accomplish in four years, he said, “what might otherwise take him a lifetime.” By the end of the day, and Esther’s chocolate cake, Lindbergh was determined to secure that backing.

  A few weeks later, Lindbergh met Goddard in Wilmington, where he had arranged another meeting. Lindbergh thought the people at Du Pont would be interested in Goddard’s projects; and he knew that the Du Pont Company could easily appropriate $25,000 a year for further research in what he considered “a fascinating and little-known field.” The meeting was a dud, as Goddard hesitated to reveal details of his liquid-fueled rocket to people more interested in gun-powder. Lindbergh gave Goddard a lift north, his first plane ride.

  After arranging a meeting with the Carnegie Institution, which yielded $5,000, Lindbergh concluded that Goddard would probably find support more readily from a single investor than from an institution, a wealthy benefactor who would not have to answer to a board. In the back of his mind, he kept thinking of Daniel Guggenheim, but he hesitated because Daniel’s son, Harry, had become one of his close friends. “Also,” Lindbergh later recalled, “I felt that Daniel Guggenheim had done much more than his share in supporting scientific progress when he had contributed five million dollars to set up a philanthropic fund for the promotion of aeronautics.”

  Revelations of Germany’s recent experiments with rockets quickly dispelled Lindbergh’s reluctance. Concerned that the United States maintain its postwar position of global supremacy, he went to Hempstead House, a gray stone castle, statelier than Falaise, which sat on a neighboring bluff in Sands Point. Daniel Guggenheim, then in his mid-seventies, met him in the entry ha
ll, where Lindbergh started blurting his interest in rockets and Goddard even before they had sat down. “Then you think that rockets have a future?” Guggenheim asked. “One can’t be certain,” said Lindbergh; “but if we advance beyond airplanes and propellers, we’ll probably have to turn to rockets.”

  Guggenheim asked Lindbergh to assess Professor Goddard’s ability and his financial needs. Lindbergh replied, “I think he knows more about rockets than any other man in the country,” and that proper expansion of his knowledge would require $100,000. Guggenheim asked Lindbergh if he thought such research was worth so large an investment. “Well, it’s taking a chance,” Lindbergh replied, pausing before committing himself, “but—yes, I think it’s worth it.” Guggenheim said he would back the venture, asking only that an advisory committee be formed and that Lindbergh join it. Lindbergh telephoned Goddard with the news, telling him to start planning the future.

  The bulk of Goddard’s first two-year budget would pay for machinists and assistants and setting up shop. He allotted himself $5,000 a year in salary. A meteorologist at Clark directed him to a high plateau in the barren southeast corner of New Mexico which promised little fog, few clouds, and mild temperatures. In the summer of 1930, just a year after Lindbergh had first heard Goddard’s name in the living room at Falaise, the professor and his wife set up a home and laboratory in the little city of Roswell. Twenty miles away, Goddard and a small team erected a rocket-launching tower made from the galvanized-iron framework of a windmill.

  The press release about Daniel Guggenheim’s patronage of Goddard’s work was couched in the most mundane terms possible, to make the research sound levelheaded. “Perfection of Professor Goddard’s rocket,” the statement said, “will mean that thermometers, barometers, electrical measuring apparatus, air traps to collect samples of air and other instruments may be sent to extreme altitudes to bring back much-needed information.” But Lindbergh already knew that Goddard was laying the foundation for launching a rocket that could reach the moon.

  When the Depression began to corrode even the Guggenheim fortune, the Foundation’s support for Goddard crumbled, forcing the physics professor back to Clark University. As a result of Lindbergh’s importuning, however, Guggenheim restored full funding to Goddard, letting him return to New Mexico. Within a few years he was launching fifteen-foot rockets weighing eighty-five pounds as high as seventy-five hundred feet, gyroscopically controlled, veering off their vertical course by only two degrees.

  To keep Guggenheim funds flowing, Lindbergh flew his friend Harry out to Roswell so that they might see an actual launch. But during their visit, two rockets misfired, leaving Goddard “as mortified as a parent whose child misbehaves in front of company.” Lindbergh’s enthusiasm, however, kept Guggenheim’s interest stoked. He even convinced the secretive Goddard to publicize some of his latest results, which not only helped alter public perception toward rockets but also—in the words of G. Edward Pendray, one of the founders of the American Rocket Society—“brought the rocket forcibly to the attention of reputable scientists and engineers as a possible instrument” for reaching high altitudes.

  IT WAS DIFFICULT to mark exactly when the Lindberghs’ honeymoon ended, as one trip blended into another. They never rested in a single place longer than a few days. At first, life on the road agreed with Anne. Strangely, it took the pressure off their period of adjustment, forcing them to work together. But in exchanging her “insulation of conventional upbringing” for his “insulation of fame, publicity, and constant travel,” Anne felt that she and her husband were not breaking down the barriers of intimacy, allowing them to explore what she called the “real life” of human relationships.

  There were the odd days when they were at least able to move into somebody’s house; but even family visits were coordinated with professional duties. What appeared to be a social invitation from the White House, for example, resulted in Lindbergh’s being appointed to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. A trip to Cleveland to see Anne’s grandmother was scheduled so that Charles could appear at the Cleveland Air Races, where he performed as a member of the Navy “High Hat” aerobatic team. At the races he also met Ernst Udet, the German flying ace, and Jerry Vultee, an engineer from Lockheed, with whom he placed an order for a low-wing monoplane for future survey flights.

  After five months on the move together, Anne gave her husband good reason to settle down. “I have felt miserable for a week or more—nauseated all the time & throwing up,” she wrote her mother from New York in late October. A week later, the Morrow family doctor confirmed that she was pregnant. “Charles is such a darling about it all,” she assured her mother, “—I am terribly lucky to have him.”

  Their travel lessened over the next few months but hardly came to a standstill. They remained the most peripatetic couple on earth, their flights now having the additional purpose of finding a place to live. The Berkshire, on East Fifty-second Street in New York City, remained their base as they looked for permanent lodging—searches by air that took them to Long Island, the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania, and upstate Connecticut. Like the rest of the Morrow family that year, they found themselves coming home to Next Day Hill to roost. At the urging of the Republican party, Dwight Morrow left his post in Mexico to run for the United States Senate, an election he won by two hundred thousand votes. His wife was thrilled to return to New Jersey, where she would reign over the social life of the community. Their son would also be joining them, still convalescing from his breakdown. And though she was often fatigued and at the mercy of her chronic heart disease, Elisabeth came back to Englewood as well, where she and a friend opened The Little School, a progressive nursery school for two- and three-year-olds in a white frame house behind a white picket fence on Linden Avenue.

  During the queasy first months of her pregnancy, Anne was happy to be at Next Day Hill, grateful for the luxury of a staff serving her breakfast in bed and for afternoons reading and walking through the gardens. Charles appreciated the proximity to his business dealings in New York, but he never felt comfortable amid the grandeur of the Morrows’ estate. By the start of 1930, the Lockheed company informed him that it had nearly completed the plane he had ordered at the Cleveland Air Races; and, after several weeks under the same roof as his in-laws, he eagerly left for Los Angeles. Surprisingly, so did Anne.

  The Lindberghs spent the first months of the new year up and down the West Coast, making the Madduxes’ house in Los Angeles their base. They visited Will Rogers and his family at his Pacific Palisades ranch. And in April, Lindbergh took delivery of his low-wing monoplane for $18,000.

  All according to Lindbergh’s specifications, the plane featured the latest developments in technology and comfort. He had requested a tandem cockpit to permit full vision to either side, the narrow fuselage allowing free use of parachutes in an emergency. An unpatented sliding isinglass canopy of Lindbergh and Vultee’s design could be drawn to enclose the two cockpits, the first of its type to be used on an airplane. The plane had dual control, to permit flying, navigating, or photography from either cockpit. Lindbergh also had a small generator installed in the ship, so that they could plug in their new flying suits, which were electrified for warmth. After a few days of testing, Lindbergh pronounced the Lockheed Sirius ready for a transcontinental flight.

  At sunrise on Easter Sunday, April 20, 1930, Lindbergh entered the front cockpit of the Sirius and revved the 450 h.p. Pratt & Whitney engine. His wife—seven months pregnant—settled into the rear, organizing her navigation equipment. Most people expected Lindbergh to prove the value of his new plane by filling the gas tanks and flying low and slowly across country. Instead, he secretly made plans to stop once along the way to refuel, thus allowing him to carry less gas and fly at full speed the entire distance, above the weather. “C. feels (very sensibly),” Anne wrote her mother, “that the object of such a flight is not the non-stop element but simply the speed across the country.”
The Lindberghs left Los Angeles, stopped in Wichita and continued eastward at full throttle all the way, often as high as fourteen thousand feet, in search of the most favorable winds. They landed in New York fourteen hours, forty-five minutes, and thirty-two seconds later—breaking the transcontinental speed record by three hours.

  Reporters awaited their arrival at Roosevelt Field. By the time the plane came to a stop, however, the pregnant Anne was too nauseous—from the altitude, engine fumes, and an entire day of noise and vibration—to leave the aircraft. Although her head had been throbbing with pain for the last four hours of the trip, Anne had suffered in silence, afraid of spoiling the record flight. Charles faced the press alone, covering as best he could for his wife’s remaining onboard. After the reporters had dispersed, however, she was spotted being helped out of the plane and into a limousine, looking ashen except for her red, tear-stained eyes. Some reported that she had suffered a nervous breakdown.

  The Lindberghs withdrew to Next Day Hill. Anne’s seclusion prompted more shocking canards. One day in May she answered the telephone, only to have a reporter from the London Daily News ask about the “widespread rumor in New York that the ‘heir’ was born in April and something happened to it!” Anne pretended to be the secretary and calmly responded, “There is no information being given out.” An army of reporters and photographers stood vigil at the Morrows’ gate. “Their intrusiveness became so objectionable,” Lindbergh later commented, “that it became necessary to employ special guards both day and night.”