topics: |  adventure | aviation | history | biography

A fabulous tale of true adventure. I am not sure why this book is so little read today - even in the US, one doesn't see it much. A phenomenal tale of pioneering adventure, a defining narrative of the American spirit.

Read it a long time ago, remember pencilling the margin along all these extracts, and then typing them in, from a small drafty house in College Station.

Excerpts

[ENTRY IN LOG:]

May 20, 1927.

Roosevelt Field, Long Island, N. Y., to Le Bourget Aerodrome, Paris, France. (Took off Roosevelt Field 7:52 A. M., E. D. T. Landed Le Bourget, 10:22 P. M. French time, May 21st.) 33 hours, 30 minutes.

---

Not so long ago, when I was a student in college, just flying an airplane seemed a dream. - p.15

Louie keeps a collection of photographs of aviators tacked to his lunch-stand walls -- on one wall the flyers who are alive, on another the flyers who are dead. ... We pilots check occasionally, just to be sure we are on the right wall. - p.146

Mechanics tie the plane's tail skid to the back of a motor truck and wrap a tarpaulin around the engine. Reporters button up their raincoats. Men look out into the night and shake their heads. The truck starter grinds. My plane lurches backward through a depression in the ground. It looks awkward and clumsy. It appears completely incapable of flight -- shrouded, lashed, and dripping. - p.178

Taking off from Roosevelt Field, NY

	[Lindbergh is waiting to take off from Roosevelt Field [Nassau
	County, Long Island], on the first nonstop New York to Paris
	flight. The weather over the Atlantic has been terrible the whole of
	last week. Now though it is a little improved it isn't all that
	good. And there are storms along the coast of Europe.

	Due to some malfunction, the engine is running thirty rpm too low. '
	"It's the weather," the mechanic said.' There is a five mph tail
	wind. 'The wind changed at daybreak, changed after the Spirit
	of St Louis was in take-off position on the west side of the field,
	after all those barrels of gasoline were filtered into the tanks,
	changed from head to tail' It is just after dawn and
	still dark. It is misty, with low clouds.  There is light rain. If
	delayed, "I couldn't taxi - the engine is too light and would
	overheat - night would fall over the Irish coast." The ground is
	wet, and although the Roosevelt runway is somewhat longer than the
	other choice (Curtiss Field), it's a bit tight.

	Competing Aifplanes: Incidentally, Roosevelt field is
	controlled by Commander Byrd, already famous for his North Pole
	flight, and who also has his ship America ready for the flight on
	Roosevelt itself. So is the other ship from Bellanca, controlled by
	Levine. A few months back the Frenchman Fonck has crashed: "Only a
	few yards away, two of Fonck's crew met their death in flames."

	Also, Lindbergh has had hardly any good sleep in the two hours he
	had to lie down before leaving his hotel at 3 AM... and it is thirty
	six hours to Paris, (3510 mi) if things go by plan.

	Lindbergh taks off at 7:52 AM. Rene Fonck was the French ace of aces
	from WWI, with 75 confirmed victories, and had tried to fly from New
	York to Paris earlier, but crashed.  ]

No plane ever took off so heavily loaded; and my propeller is set for
cruising, not for take-off. Of course our test flights at San Diego
indicate that it will take off -- theoretically at least. But... those
carefully laid performance curves of ours have no place for mist, or a
tail wind, or a soft runway. And what of the thirty revolutions lost,
and the effect of moisture on the skin? No, I can turn to no formula,
the limits of logic are passed. Now, the intangible elements of flight
-- experience, instinct, intuition -- must make the final judgement,
place their weight on the scales. In the last analysis, when the margin
is close, when all the known factors have been considered, after
equations have produced their final lifeless numbers, one measures a
field with an eye, and checks the answer beyond the conscious mind.

....

Wind, weather power, load --- gradually these elements stop churning in
my mind. It's less a decision of logic than of feeling, the kind of
feeling that comes when you gauge the distance to be jumped between two
stones across a brook. Something within you disengages itself from your
body and travels ahead with your vision to make the test. You can feel
it try the jump as you stand looking. Then uncertainty gives way to the
conviction that it can or can't be done. Sitting in the cockpit,
in seconds, minutes long, the conviction surges through me that wheels
will  leave the ground, that the wings will will rise above
the wires, that it is time to start the flight.

I turn to the men at the blocks, and nod.	- p.183-185

36 hours over the Atlantic

What possible connection is there between the intersection of a pencil's
lines in San Diego and the ability of this airplane, here,
now to fly?	- p.185

It's probably wise not to eat, anyway -- easier to stay awake on an
empty stomach.	-p.201

There's an intangible value in striving for perfection -- a value that
can't be measured on such material standards as pounds of weight or
resistance. When I was a child in grade school, I learned a verse which
comes to mind when logic says I'm spending too much time on details:
	"In the elder days of Art,
	Builders wrought with greatest care
	Each minute and unseen part;
	For the Gods see everywhere."
	- p.204. [I feel it would scan better with the
	last line "for the gods they see everywhere"]

"WHICH WAY IS IRELAND?" - p.459
	[To fisherman in boat off Ireland, after sixteen hours of flying
	over the Atlantic, and many mistrackings to avoid icy clouds, fog,
	etc. However, when he finally reached Ireland, soon thereafter,
	Lindbergh found himself almost precisely on course.]

Landing at Le Bourget field, Paris

[From over the Le Bourget Field in Paris, 10:22 at night]
There are thousands of lights along one side. They probably come from a
factory. Surely Le Bourget wouldn't have a factory that size right next
to it. [they are the headlights of cars waiting to see him land]
I'm almost overhead now. I can see no warning lights, no approach
lights, and no revolving beacon.

... And now, from the far side of the field, I see that all those
smaller lights are automobiles, not factory windows. They seem to be
blocked in traffic, on a road behind the hangars.	- p.488-489

---

Not a bad landing, but I am beyond the light -- cant see anything ahead,
like flying in the fog... The field must be clear ... Slower now

slow enought to ground loop safely - left rudder - reverse it

stick over the other way - The Spirit of St Louis swings around
and stops rolling, resting on the solidness of earth, in the center of
Le Bourget.

I start to taxi back toward the floodlights and hangars -- But the
entire field ahead is covered with running figures!

[Lindbergh had not expected reports of his sightings to have
reached. "When reports of my plane being sighted over Ireland,
England, and Normandy, brought automobiles pouring out form Paris
by the thousands, two companies of soldiers were sent to
reinforce the civil police." Despite this the crowd broke
through, as they were to do in Croydon in London and many other
airports around the world.






 
commemorative postage stamp, USA

Remembering the event: Edwards Park, WWII pilot

Contributed by WWII pilot Edwards Park in "The Smithsonian book of Flight"

We ten year olds expected this parade of triumphs to continue without missing
a step. So when Nungesser and Coli went down, we crashed with them.
And when 12 days later, Charles Lindbergh took off alone from
Roosevelt Field, we dreaded another tragedy. I'd gone on an expedition
that May day, and we heard distant bells ringing everywhere, and then
a factory whistle. "That guy Lindstrom must have made it to Paris,"
my brother said.
    "Lindbergh," I answered absently. For the joyous bells stirred echoes
in my head. The dream was not over. The triumphs {\would}
continue.	- p.75

	[Nungesser, dashing french ace of WWI, and Coli, had taken off
	from Paris for New York, but were never heard of again.]

--- blurb
Charles A. Lindbergh captured the world's attention -- and changed the
course of history -- when he completed his famous nonstop flight from New
York to Paris in 1927. In The Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh takes the
reader on an extraordinary journey, bringing to life the thrill and peril of
trans-Atlantic travel in a single-engine plane. Eloquently told and sweeping
in its scope, Lindbergh's Pulitzer Prize-winning account is an epic
adventure tale for all time.