The Spirit of ST Louis (19 page)

It's dark by the time I reach my room at the Garden City Hotel. I wanted to stay on the field, but there's no place to sleep, and the hotel isn't far away.

2

During supper my newly made friends bring me up to date on the New York-to-Paris flight developments. Everything centers on Curtiss and Roosevelt Fields. Mitchel Field has dropped out of the picture -- partly because it's military and partly because of its size. The runway on Roosevelt Field is close to a mile long—it's really the only place for a heavily loaded take-off. Byrd has a lease on the field, but I can probably get permission to use the runway when he doesn't need it himself. His trimotored Fokker is now in the hangar at the far end of Roosevelt. Its rebuilding has just been completed, after the crack-up at Teterboro. Byrd and Noville weren't injured very badly, but Floyd Bennett is still in the hospital. Chamberlin's Bellanca is on Curtiss Field, only a few hundred feet away from the Spirit of St. Louis.

"Why hasn't the Bellanca taken off yet?" I ask.

"Weather and personnel trouble," Blythe tells me. "The route forecasts have been bad, and there's been a lot of squabbling going on. You've probably read about some of it. Acosta withdrew, you know. He's going to fly with Byrd."

"Don't think it was Giuseppe Bellanca's fault though, or Clarence Chamberlin's," one of my friends adds. "The plane would have been off long ago if the decision had been up to them."

The Wright Aeronautical Corporation is in the enviable but difficult position of having its Whirlwind engines in all the New York-to-Paris planes. Consequently the corporation must maintain strict neutrality as far as Byrd, Chamberlin, and myself are concerned. Its engineers and mechanics have been instructed to help put each engine and plane in the best possible condition, as a matter of policy. The corporation's interest doesn't end with the engine, Boedecker explains, for the engine is no better than its installation; and if something goes wrong with a plane that forces it to land in the ocean, the engine will probably get the blame regardless of the real cause. As long as its Whirlwinds are going on the Paris flight, the Wright Corporation intends to get them there -- engine, installation, plane, and all.

During the last few days, Blythe tells me, newspaper interest has become intense. Several editors think that the New York-to-Paris flight will be the story of the year. With a long record of crashes, with four men killed, two missing, and three injured, and with three planes waiting only on weather or minor adjustments before taking off for France, the journalistic atmosphere has reached fever heat.

Before I arrived at St. Louis yesterday, New Yorkers had paid relatively little attention to my project. The fact that I was an unknown pilot, that I planned to fly alone, and that my plane was being built by a small company over two thusand miles away, had thrown them off guard. But when I landed on Lambert Field, nonstop and overnight from California, their attitude underwent a rapid change. Then my swift, though shorter, flight through to New York caused me be viewed with different eyes. My critics are confronted with the fact that the Spirit of St. Louis has now been more thoroughly tested in long cross-country flights than either the America or the Columbia. The trim lines of my plane, the solo crossing of the continent, my actual presence here among them, create extraordinary elements of competition and suspense, and give new impetus to old arguments -- both lay and professional. Engineers argue about whether wings take off so heavily loaded. Pilots question the ability of a man to fly 3,600 miles alone. There are a few who believe I have the best chance of all, but most say that mine is a fool's venture.

"What do you think of that?"

I read the clipping placed beside my fork:

THINKS NUNGESSER TRIED
TOO MUCH

__________________________

HALIFAX, N.S., May 10 (AP).—Captain Charles Nungesser made "the mistake of endeavoring to fly his machine the entire distance himself, in the opinion of Major A. S. Shearer of the Royal Canadian Air Force, who arrived here from Ottawa yesterday in company with J. L. Ralston, Minister of National Defense. The Major said he considered It a physical impossibility for one man to pilot an airplane across the Atlantic for forty hours---

"Well, I've stayed awake over forty hours more than once, working pretty hard most of the time too," I say. "I don't see by I shouldn't be able to fly that long, sitting down."

After supper we drive back to Curtiss Field. "What's the latest news on Nungesser and Coli?" I ask.

"Same story. One headline says they've been picked up; It next says they haven't. That sells papers. There are reports that their plane was heard over Newfoundland by a dozen people last Monday. It will probably be denied in the n editions. Some of the French papers printed an account the White Bird's landing at New York. They even quoted Nungesser's first words to the American press."

Mulligan has the cowlings off when we arrive, and working efficiently and quietly on my engine. Boedecker pulls off his coat and starts working too. Blythe goes out to talk to reporters. I putter around the plane. I'm going to take out the six dry batteries to save weight; the instrument board lights are too bright anyway, and I can carry an extra flashlight in my pocket.

"You've certainly got the rival camps stirred up," Blythe tells me when he comes back. "The press boys say it looks at though mechanics are going to work all night on both the Fokker and the Bellanca."

"How about the Fokker?" I ask. "Is Byrd ready to go?" "They're all damn secret about their plans, but he'll probably be tied up for a few days with tests."

"Do you think the Bellanca will try a morning take-off?"

"There are rumors to that effect," Blythe replies, "but the Weather Bureau says conditions over the Atlantic are pretty bad."

"As far as I'm concerned, that's fine," I say. "I hope the weather stays bad until I get my engine checked and compasses swung. Then I’d like to follow this storm right on across the ocean, the same way I followed it from San Diego."

3

LINDBERGH HERE, READY
FOR SEA HOP

CHAMBERLIN AND LINDBERGH
SET TO GO

It's the morning of May 13th. Blythe has brought the New York papers to my room. I stare, slightly dazed, at the headlines. My name is in huge print on all front pages. I glance down the columns:

Bellanca Plane, Spurred
by Lindbergh's Arrival,
Is Ready to Go

Spirit of St. Louis and America Join Their Rival Here for the Hop-Off

WEATHER AT SEA STILL BAD

SHIPS HUNT NUNGESSER

What promises to be the most spectacular race ever held - 3,600 miles over the open sea to Paris -- may start tomorrow morning. Three transatlantic planes are on Curtiss and Roosevelt Fields, within a short distance of each other, ready to take the air.

"When will they go and who will be the first away?" was the question on everyone's lips.

Observers at the field look to Lindbergh as a dark 'horse in the race. He arrived yesterday afternoon, ahead of schedule, after a fast seven and a quarter hour flight front St. Louis. The trim, slender lines of his silver-coated monoplane impressed pilots and mechanics alike.---

"You've taken the show," Blythe says. "The boys don't know how to size you up. They can't laugh off your flight from California. At any other time that would be a big story in itself."

"How's the weather?" I ask.

"Still bad."

"Let's get some breakfast."

When we arrive at the hangar on Curtiss Field, I find a crowd already assembled to see the Spirit of St. Louis. Mulligan comes up to me with a piece of cowling in his hands.

"Where's the propeller?" I inquire.

"Over at the Curtiss Company," he tells me. "We found a crack in the spinner. They're fixing up a new one for you."

"They said they wouldn't send a bill for the work," Boedecker adds, "so we didn't wait to ask you if it was all right. Outside of that, your engine's checked and set to go. Mulligan and I worked most of the night on it -- thought you might want to run some tests today – – – I'd like you to meet Ken Lane, chief airplane engineer for Wright -- just got in this morning. He'll be in charge of the corporation's interests over here from now on."

It's extraordinary. Here's the Curtiss Company, one of the Wright Corporation's chief competitors, repairing my spinner for nothing. Everywhere I turn it's the same way. Bellanca and Chamberlin stop by to wish me well. Commander Byrd comes to my hangar to extend a welcome, and to offer me the use of Roosevelt Field for my take-off. He's spent much more effort, and money than I have in preparing for the Paris flight, and he must be just as anxious as I am to be first to land on Le Bourget; yet he gives me the use of his runway, free of charge -- and he says I'm welcome to his weather information too.

"The press boys want another interview and some more photographs," Blythe tells me. "They want a picture of you, Byrd, and Chamberlin, together. How about, Commander?"

Byrd smiles and nods.

I work on the Spirit of St. Louis most of the morning, with mechanics and instrument experts. Mulligan is installing a carburetor air heater on the Whirlwind; we have concluded that all my trouble over the mountains, on the flight between San Diego and St. Louis, was caused by cold air. After lunch I walk to Roosevelt Field to go over the runway, foot by foot. The surface has a tendency to softness, and I wish it were a little wider; but on the whole, it will give me a longer and better take-off than I expected to find anywhere around New York.

Now I must take Brice Goldsborough on a flight to check my compasses. That will be fun. It will surprise everyone to see how quickly the Spirit of St. Louis can take off and climb. A car bumps out over the field to pick me up, and a motorcycle policeman escorts us back to the hangar, where two more uniformed officers are stationed at the doors. Inside, Blythe hands me another group of papers. "You won't e these very much," he says.

A big front-page picture of myself is below the tabloid headlines. I'm the "flyin' fool," and I'm supposed to be ready take off for Paris at any moment! Didn't I tell the reporters that I wouldn't leave until the weather was right and my compasses were swung? All they had to do was look through the door of the hangar if they didn't believe me. Well, I suppose they think this makes a better story. And here's another article, just as bad:

Flying Kid Will Write From Paris

--- The Kid Flyer sauntered---to Curtiss Field -- in his pocket was a toothbrush and a comb --

Asked about his mother, Mrs. Evangeline Lindbergh, a teacher of chemistry in Cass Technical High School, Detroit, the young aviator said: "Mother is a flying enthusiast --

--No, of course I'm not going to wire her before I take off. It would be too hysterical, as if I were worrying or thought she was. - - - And I'm not going to tell what Mother's address is. Reporters might worry her too much." Meanwhile, newspapermen in Detroit found Mrs. Lindbergh who steadfastly refused to make a statement ---

Now, I don't carry a toothbrush in my pocket, and what I said about my mother was very different from that -- I wish the Detroit reporters would leave her alone.

Depending on which paper I pick up, I find that I was born in Minnesota, that I was born in Michigan, that I was born in Nebraska; that I learned to fly at Omaha, that I learned to fly at Lincoln, that I learned to fly at San Antonio, in Texas. I'm told that my nickname is "Lucky," that I land and take off by looking through periscopes, that without them I can see only downward from my cockpit, that I carry "devices" on my plane which will enable me to "snatch a snooze" while steering a "beeline" for Paris.

4

There are knocks on the door of my bedroom, in the Garden City Hotel. Conversation stops.

"Telegram, sir!" I give the bellboy a dime and tear open the yellow envelope.

CAPT. CHARLES A. LINDBERGH DETROIT MICH.

CURTISS FIELD, LONG ISLAND, N.Y. MAY 13, 27

ARRIVE NEW YORK TOMORROW MORNING

MOTHER

Good Lord! I know what's happened: it's the newspapers. She's been reading the stories that say I'm likely to crash on take-off, like Fonck and Davis, or be lost at sea, like Nungesser and Coli. She's coming to Long Island to see if I need advice or help --- No, it's not as definite as that. She's coming to be near me in this period of danger. Probably the Detroit reporters have been phoning her every hour. But Curtiss Field is the last place where she should be. I don't want to leave her to the tabloid press when I take off for Paris; and before that, I should concentrate every minute on my preparations. I'll telephone --- no, her train's already left.

I begin to realize there's another reason, besides being first to Paris, why I should get away from New York. Every day I stay here will draw more of my attention from my plane and preparations. My problems are already shifting from aviation to reporters, photographers, business propositions, and requests for autographs. Now I must arrange to meet and care for my mother when she arrives in this chaotic place.

It wouldn't be so bad if I could go off quietly for an hour by myself -- if I could walk over the field alone and feel earth beneath the soles of my shoes while I let the wind blow confusion from my mind. But the moment I step outside the hangar I'm surrounded by people and protected by police. Somebody shouts my name, and immediately I'm surrounded by a crowd. Even at the hotel, newspapermen fill the lobby and watch the entrance so carefully that I can't walk around the block without being followed. There's never a free moment except when I'm in my room. It detracts from the health of one's body and prevents real clarity of thought. That's why Lane, Mulligan, Blythe, and I are sitting here together. That's why I phoned room service to send our supper up on trays. I'm tired of shaking hands, and writing my name on slips of paper, and being poked and stared at. I want to spend a normal hour for a change.

I put the telegram in my pocket. The waiter leaves. Conversation begins again.

"There are more damn crazy ideas floating around this place than I've ever heard before."

"Did you talk to that fellow with the gray beard? Says he's invented some way to get more power out of a gallon of gas."

"Sure, I told him the Curtiss Company might be interested. Thought it would keep him out of the way for a day or two."

"That guy with the high speed engine is the tough one to shake off."

"Say, did I tell you about the man who's got a young dancer on his string? She's worked out an act to symbolize the flight between New York and Paris. He wants to get her out here in costume and have her photographed doing a split on the propeller of the Spirit of St. Louis."

"A what?"

"A split."

"'What's that?"

"It's a stage stunt. You know—when they slide one leg Out front and the other back, and set down in between."

"On a propeller?"

"Yeh -- horizontal."

"I should think it would be pretty difficult."

"Well, we're not going to make the test."

The phone rings. It's another weather report. The Atlantic is still partly covered with areas of fog and storm, and there's not much sign of improvement.

"You ought to visit the New York Weather Bureau, Captain," Blythe says. "Doc Kimball could give you a lot of dope. He's working out charts for Byrd, you know. The boys all say he's good."

"I'd like to do that tomorrow," I answer. "Do you suppose he'll be there Saturday? I've got to get my passport and visa lined up too. I wonder if --- "

The door bursts open and two men stride into my room carrying press cameras. We all jump from our chairs. 'There’s a moment of silence.

"Say, who do you think you are?" Lane is the first to regain his voice.

"We represent the New York – – We're here to get a picture of 'Lucky Lindy' shaving and sitting on the bed in his pajamas."

"Well, where I come from, it's customary to knock before you walk into somebody's bedroom!"

The men grin, look at me, start adjusting their cameras. "No! --- Get out." We practically push them from the room.

It may be bad public relations, but I'm not going to have my private life invaded to that extent. I feel fighting mad about the incident.

Blythe laughs. "You'll find a lot of 'em like that around here," he says.

We lock the door.

5

My mother spent one day with me, and left. She felt she had to have that day, she told me. The stories in the newspapers and the phone calls from reporters in Detroit disturbed her so greatly that she had to see me before I took off -- just to see me -- to talk to me -- to make sure I really wanted to go and felt it was the right thing to do. Then, she said, she would return home. She had never meant to stay, because she knew that would take my attention from the flight.

This is Monday evening, May 16th. The Spirit of St. Louis is ready to take off, but my route to Paris is still covered with fog and storm. These have been the most extraordinary days I’ve ever spent; and I can't call them very pleasant. Life has become too strange and hectic. The attention of the entire country is centered on the flight to Paris, and most of all on me -- because I'm going alone, because I'm young, because I'm a "dark horse." Papers in every city and village are headlining my name and writing articles about me. Newspaper, radio, and motion-picture publicity has brought people crowding out to Curtiss and Roosevelt Fields until the Nassau County police are faced with a major traffic problem. Seventy-five hundred came last Saturday, the
New York Times
said. On Sunday there were thirty thousand!

And mail has started coming to the field, addressed to me. First a few letters arrived, then dozens; now I have more than a hundred envelopes stacked in my room. I've opened only a few. The writers want me to send autographs, want to give me advice, want to show me inventions, to offer me business propositions, to share with me their viewpoints on religion. One or two dreamed that Nungesser and Coil are still alive, and sent vague directions for finding them. What to do with all this mail is a problem. I don't like to sit down at a desk and answer letters; but anyway, I'm not going to worry about that before my take-off.

Up to date, our project has been successful beyond my wildest dreams. We've brought the attention to St. Louis that we planned. We've helped focus everybody's eyes on aviation and its future. We've shown what kind of flights a modern plane can make; and my reputation as a pilot has been established. The
New York Times
is going to buy the story of my flight and syndicate it throughout the country. All this is very satisfactory. But there are disturbing elements too. The way the tabloid people acted when my mother came, left me with no respect for them whatever. They didn't care how much they hurt her feelings or frightened her about my flight, as long as they got their pictures and their stories. Did she know what a dangerous trip her son was undertaking? they asked. Did she realize how many older and more experienced aviators had been killed in its attempt? They wanted her to describe her sensations for their readers. They demanded that we embrace for their cameras and say good-by. When we refused, one paper had two other people go through the motions, and substituted photographs of our heads for theirs --composite pictures, they call them. I decided then that I wouldn't write about my flight for the tabloid press no matter what they'd pay me.

Then there was that unnecessary incident with the press on the field, last Saturday. I had taken first Mulligan and then Boedecker up to check my engine in flight, and on the bit landing I'd broken my tail skid, simply because some photographers got in the way again. The most annoying thing was that, instead of having a penalty to pay for violating the field regulations, the cameramen got a more valuable picture--and the reporters had "a better story." That seemed to be all they cared about. As far as I could tell, the fact that damaged my plane to keep from hitting somebody didn't bother them a bit. Most reporters omitted that from their accounts. "So terrific was his speed that in landing he slightly damaged the machine's tail skid. Undismayed by this accident, which he considered trivial, Lindbergh hopped out wearing a broad smile: 'Boys, she's ready and rarin' to go' he said." That's how one of the next day's articles went. These fellows must think I'm a cowpuncher, just transferred to aviation. Now they're calling me "a lanky demon of the air from the wide open spaces."

Such statements make "good stories," and the fact that they're not true causes little disturbance to the press. Accuracy, I've learned, is secondary to circulation—a thing to be sacrificed, when occasion arises, to a degree depending on the standards of each paper. But accuracy means something to me. It's vital to my sense of values. I've learned not to trust people who are inaccurate. Every aviator knows that if mechanics are inaccurate, aircraft crash. If pilots are inaccurate, they get lost -- sometimes killed. In my profession life itself depends on accuracy.

6

Dr. Kimball is a grand person. He had his latest weather map spread out when I visited his bureau in New York City, and he went to no end of trouble explaining its details to me. He was disturbed about my intention to follow the great-circle route rather than the ship lanes. He said he couldn't get enough information that far north to forecast the weather properly. I explained that I'm willing to take a chance on weather in order to save distance; and that if the weather proves too bad I can change my course to the southward after I'm under way. Dr. Kimball may be disturbed, but I'm pleased by the forecasts he can give me. I hadn't counted on getting much information about weather over the ocean.

On the strength of Dr. Kimball's forecasts of continuing conditions, I've accepted a number of invitations to visit private homes. Today I had lunch with Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., at Oyster Bay. He showed me some of his father's books and trophies, and gave me several letters of introduction to friends of his in Europe. "You've got to meet Ambassador Herrick when you're over there," he said. "He's wonderful fellow -- good friend of mine."

Those letters create a problem, because I couldn't very well refuse to take them after all the hospitality the Colonel extended, and the trouble he went to in writing them;
they may be of great help to me in France. But I turned down a thousand dollars rather than carry a pound of mail, and my partners in St. Louis decided they wouldn't ask me to
anything on the flight. "If you get yourself and your plane across the ocean, that's enough," they said. I'm taking one letter for Postmaster Conkling of Springfield -- I couldn't say no to him -- and one letter for my friend Gregory Brandewiede, who worked with me laying out the route. That's all -- except for the messages of introduction.

I found a local doctor waiting to talk to me when I returned to the field. He was concerned about the effects of fatigue and eyestrain on my flight. He had brought me a small first-aid kit, and a pair of colored spectacles for protection from the sun. I don't think I'll need either one, but I slipped them into my map pocket because his arguments were good. You feel grateful to men like that. They help wherever they can, and they don't expect anything for it.

Some of my best hours, here on Long Island, have been spent showing off the Spirit of St. Louis. Charlie Lawrance came to look it over -- he's president of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation and one of the men who developed the Whirlwind engine. Rene Fonck stopped by, and Al Williams, and Tony Fokker; they were legendary figures to me a week ago. C. M. Keys and Frank Russell of the Curtiss Company came to see me, and Chance Vought and Grover Loening. One day Harry Guggenheim arrived with his wife -- he runs the big fund that's promoting aviation.

During the last day or two I've let a number of reporters sit in my cockpit while I explained the working of instruments and controls. Now that I know the New York press representatives better, I'm finding a few with standards or value I respect -- men like Owen and Lyman of the
Times
, Gould of the
Post
, and Allen of the
World
. They don't try to build up a supersensational story. They make a real effort in get at facts, and to keep the articles they write in balance with the subjects covered. They're interested in the fundamental problems of my flight -- in such things as wing loading on take-off, fuel consumption, cruising speed, and my plans for measuring wind drift over water. Time is well spent in answering their questions.

Bill MacCracken, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, has flown up from Washington. I asked him about navigation lights for the Spirit of St. Louis. The new federal regulations require lights on night-flying aircraft, but I've left them off, wiring and all, to save weight and complication.

"Could I have permission to fly without lights, on thin particular trip?" I inquired.