Read The Spirit of ST Louis Online
Authors: Charles A. Lindbergh
Tags: #Transportation, #Transatlantic Flights, #Adventurers & Explorers, #General, #United States, #Air Pilots, #Historical, #Biography & Autobiography, #Aviation, #Spirit of St. Louis (Airplane), #Biography, #History
The Spirit of ST Louis (57 page)
Land
must
be somewhere near. Those boats were too small to be anchored far at sea—or were they? When I first saw them, navigating problems seemed past, as though their bows pointed my direction like signposts, saying: "This way to Paris." But as I leave them behind, a few black dots on an endless waste of ocean—about to vanish, as birds vanish into distant air—reason argues that I know nothing more about my latitude than I did before. They might be north of Scotland; they might be south of Ireland. They might be anywhere along the coast. There's no way to tell. And it's dangerous to take for granted that land is very near; even small boats sometimes venture far to sea. The Grand Banks of Newfoundland run hundreds of miles offshore. For all I know, similar shallows may extend from the European side. What can I do but continue on the course I set before, and follow the same plan of navigation?
Patches of blue sky above me are shrinking in size. To the north, heavier storm clouds gather.
THE TWENTY-EIGHTH HOUR
Over the Atlantic
HOURS OF FUEL CONSUMED
NOSE TANK
¼ + 1-1-1-1-1 1-1
LEFT WING CENTER WING RIGHT WING
¼ + 1-1-1 ¼ + ¼ + 1-1-1
FUSELAGE
1-1-1-1-1 1-1-1-1-1 1-1-1
Ten fifty-two a.m. Twenty-seven hours behind me. If I've covered sixty degrees of longitude since leaving New York, it's four hours later here -- or about three o'clock in the
afternoon. I reset my heading and bring the compass needle back to center.
I keep scanning the horizon through breaks between squalls. Any one of those rain curtains may hide a ship or another fishing fleet. The air is cool, fresh, and pleasantly turbulent. I fly a hundred feet or so above the ocean -- now under open sky, now with rain streaming over wings and struts.
Is that a cloud on the northeastern horizon, or a strip of low fog -- or --
can it possibly be land?
It looks like land, but I don't intend to be tricked by another mirage. Framed between two gray curtains of rain, not more than ten or fifteen miles away, a purplish blue band has hardened from the haze -- flat below, like a waterline -- curving on top, as though composed of hills or aged mountains.
I'm only sixteen hours out from Newfoundland. I allowed eighteen and a half hours to strike the Irish coast. If that's Ireland, I'm two and a half hours ahead of schedule. Can this be another, clearer image, like the islands of the morning? Is there something strange about it too, like the fishing fleet and that haunting head? Is each new illusion to become more real until reality itself is meaningless? But my mind is clear. I'm no longer half asleep. I'm awake – alert -- aware. The temptation is too great. I can't hold my course any longer. The Spirit of St. Louis banks over toward the nearest point of land.
I stare at it intently, not daring to believe my eyes, keeping hope in check to avoid another disappointment, watching the shades and contours unfold into a coast line -- a coastline coming down from the north -- a coastline bending toward the east -- a coast line with rugged shores and rolling mountains. It's much too early to strike England, France, or Scotland. It's early to be striking Ireland; but that's the nearest land.
A fjorded coast stands out as I approach. Barren islands guard it. Inland, green fields slope up the sides of warted mountains. This
must
be Ireland. It can be no other place than Ireland. The fields are too green for Scotland; the mountains too high for Brittany or Cornwall.
Now, I'm flying above the foam-lined coast, searching for prominent features to fit the chart on my knees. I've climbed to two thousand feet so I can see the contours of the country better. The mountains are old and rounded; the farms small and stony. Rain-glistened dirt roads wind narrowly through hills and fields. Below me lies a great tapering bay; a long, bouldered island; a village. Yes, there's a place on the chart where it all fits -- line of ink on line of shore -- Valentia and Dingle Bay, on the southwestern coast of Ireland!
I can hardly believe it's true. I'm almost exactly on my route, closer than I hoped to come in my wildest dreams back in San Diego. What happened to all those detours of the night around the thunderheads? Where has the swinging compass error gone? The wind above the storm clouds must have blown fiercely on my tail. In edging northward, intuition must have been more accurate than reasoned navigation.
The southern tip of Ireland! On course; over two hours ahead of schedule; the sun still well up in the sky; the weather clearing! I circle again, fearful that I'll wake to find this too a phantom, a mirage fading into mid-Atlantic mist. But there's no question about it; every detail on the chart has its counterpart below; each major feature on the ground has its symbol on the chart. The lines correspond exactly. Nothing in that world of dreams and phantoms was like this. I spiral lower, looking down on the little village. There are boats in the harbor, wagons on the stone-fenced roads. People are running out into the streets, looking up and waving. This is earth again, the earth where I've lived and now will live once more. Here are human beings. Here's a human welcome. Not a single detail is wrong. I've never seen such beauty before -- fields so green, people so human, a village so attractive, mountains and rocks so mountainous and rocklike.
One senses only through change, appreciates only after absence. I haven't been far enough away to know the earth before. For twenty-five years I've lived on it, and yet not seen it till this moment. For nearly two thousand hours, I've flown over it without realizing what wonders lay below, what crystal clarity -- snow-white foam on black-rock shores -- curving hill above its valley -- the hospitality of little houses – the welcome of waving arms. During my entire life I've accepted these gifts of God to man, and not known what was mine until this moment. It's like rain after drought; spring after a northern winter. I've been to eternity and back. I know how the dead would feel to live again.
I circle a third time, straighten out, and spread the chart across my knees. Only six segments more to fly, only six hundred miles to Paris. There are golden hours of the afternoon still left, and the long evening twilight. I'll cover most of that six hundred miles before darkness. There'll be less of night to Paris than on a single flight over my air-mail route in December. One round trip on the mail route would almost span the remaining distance to Paris. Now I'm dealing with distances and methods of navigation I can measure in terms of past experience -- two flights over the mail route -- and if the squalls are no worse than this, night flying will be easy.
I look ahead at the weather. But -- Is it after all a nightmare? -- Have I lost ability to distinguish fact from fancy? There's only water ahead where land has been, and storms instead of breaking sky! Where is the coast? What's happened? What's wrong again? The compass needle almost centers on its mark, and I've not changed the setting on the dial. Phantoms, mist islands, haunted fishermen; and now, is this perfect landfall also an illusion? It's too much. Hope has leapt too high to live with nothing to sustain it. But again, it's too wrong; so terribly wrong that there must be a simple answer. There always is a simple answer when life seems as wrong as this. The mountains, the coast, the rocks, the village—all Ireland
couldn't
disappear! Collect thoughts -- blink eyes -- shake head -- start again.
There is a simple answer. I look back; and there behind me, less than a mile away, lies Valentia and the Irish coast. I was watching first the earth and then the chart with such intentness that I lost all sense of direction; and in straightening out, I took up the reverse heading to my course. I'm pointed back over the ocean, a hundred and eighty degrees from Paris. The storms ahead are only the scattered squalls through which I've come. And the earth-inductor compass, naturally, is reading backward on a backtrack heading. Just to convince myself, I kick left rudder and watch the needle lean over toward the right.
I bank steeply around and set my course southeastward, cutting across the bouldered fjords, flying low over the hilltop farms, the rock fences, and the small, green fields of Kerry. Now, I can check the engine -- All cylinders hitting on the left switch -- all cylinders hitting on the right -- And all instrument readings are normal.
Sheep and cattle graze on their sloping pastures. Horse-drawn carts crawl along their shiny roads. People move across walled-in barnyards, through doorways of the primitive stone buildings. It must be a hard place to gain a living from the soil. And it would be worse than New England for a forced landing.
Even the wish to sleep has left, and with it the phantoms and voices. I didn't notice their absence before; but now, as I settle down for the last six hundred miles to Paris, I realize that they remained behind with the fishing fleet. They vanished with that first strange touch of Europe and of man. Since I sighted those specks on the water, I've been as wide awake as though I started the flight this morning after a warm breakfast and a full night's sleep. The thought of floating off in a bed of feathers has lost its attractiveness.
Time is no longer endless or the horizon destitute of hope. The strain of take-off, storm, and ocean, lies behind. There'll e no second night above the clouds, no more grappling with misty walls of ice. There's only one more island to cross -- only the narrow tip of an island. I look at England's outline on my map. And then, within an hour, I'll see the coast of France; and beyond that, Paris and Le Bourget. As Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were stepping-stones from America, Ireland and England are stepping-stones to Europe. Yesterday, each strip of sea I crossed was an advance messenger of the ocean. Today, these islands down below are heralds to a continent.
It's as though a curtain has fallen behind me, shutting off the stagelike unreality of this transatlantic flight. It's been like a theater where the play carries you along in time and place until you forget you're only a spectator. You grow unaware of the walls around you, of the program clasped in your hand, even of your body, its breath, pulse, and being. You live with the actors and the setting, in a different age and place. It's not until the curtain drops that consciousness and body reunite. Then, you turn your back on the stage. step out into the cool night, under the lights of streets, between the displays of store windows. You feel life surging in the crowd around you, life as it was when you entered the theater, hours before. Life is real. It always was real. The stage, of course, was the dream. All that transpired there is now a memory, shut off by the curtain, by the doors of the theater, by the passing minutes of time.
Striking Ireland was like leaving the doors of a theater -- phantoms for actors; cloud islands and temples for settings; the ocean behind me, an empty stage. The flight across is already like a dream. I'm over villages and fields, back to land and wakefulness and a type of flying that I know. I'm myself again, in earthly skies and over earthly ground. My hands and feet and eyelids move, and I can think as I desire. That third, controlling element has retired to the background. I'm no longer three existences in one. My mind is able to command, and my body follows out its orders with precision.
Ireland, England, France, Paris! The night at Paris! This night at Paris -- less than six hours from now -- France and Paris! It's like a fairy tale. Yesterday I walked on Roosevelt Field; today I'll walk on Le Bourget.
I'm angling slowly back onto my great-circle route. I must have been within three miles of it when I sighted Ireland. An error of fifty miles would have been good dead reckoning under the most perfect conditions. Three miles was – – –well, what was it? Before I made this flight, I would have said carelessly that it was luck. Now, luck seems far too trivial a word, a term to be used only by those who've never seen the curtain drawn or looked on life from far away.
That little lighthouse down below, so white against gray rock and water, what security it offers! Tonight, its beam would guide me back to Ireland if England should be blanketed with fog, and I could circle with it until dawn. If my engine failed, I could stall down into the waves beside it and find helping hands to pull my rubber raft ashore. My eyes follow the coast as it bends back northward, half hidden by a squall. Beyond those distant mountains, among the stones and fields of Tipperary, some of my ancestors lived, three generations ago, on my mother's side. They sailed for weeks to reach America. I've returned to their old world in less than thirty hours.
Ireland -- the land of banshees, ghosts, and fairies. I've never believed in apparitions; but how can I explain the forms I carried with me through so many hours of this day -- the voices that spoke with such authority and clearness -- that told me -- that told me -- but what did they tell me? I can't remember a single word they said.
THE TWENTY-NINTH HOUR
home
HOURS OF FUEL CONSUMED
NOSE TANK
¼ + 1-1-1-1-1 1-1
LEFT WING CENTER WING RIGHT WING
¼ + 1-1-1 ¼ + ¼ + 1-1-1
FUSELAGE
- 1-1-1-1-1 1-1-1-1
It's eleven fifty a.m. on the clock. I pull my watch from my pocket—eleven forty-nine and three quarters. Yes, they check. I hold the watch in my palm for a moment. It always stirs old memories, for it belonged to my grandfather. He used to let me touch it with my fingers as a child, guess at the time from its hands, see how far away my ears could hear it tick. When my grandfather died my uncle gave the watch to me, and we've passed through many an interesting hour together. We've spilled off my motorcycle, stunted in my planes, made—let's see—eighteen parachute jumps all told; and now we've flown across an ocean. Once a year I spend a dollar to have it cleaned, and it's always carried on accurately and snugly, in its little nickel-alloy case, unmindful of the changing time and space through which it passes.
Now it's 11:52. I run my eyes over the instruments, put the twenty-seventh score on the board, and shift to the nose tank. I'll leave the nose tank on until it runs dry, so the center of gravity will be well to the rear if I'm forced down on some field along the coast. The heavier the tail, the less chance of nosing over. Also, I want to get a check on fuel consumption. None of the tanks has run dry yet, and I'm still figuring gallons per hour by theory instead of actual timing. The nose tank has already lasted longer than I expected. Judging from it, I should have enough fuel left to fly through the night and well into daylight, even though I've been using a higher cruising speed.
The wind is strengthening, and tail. Cumulus clouds mottle the sea with their shadows. Scattered squalls, one after another, emerge from the haze -- light squalls, light haze, a clearing sky. I can see almost to the horizon. Some man-imagined line below me divides the Atlantic Ocean from St. George's Channel. Ahead, less than two hours away, lies England's Cornish coast.
It's a pleasant sky, neither dull nor dangerous. The mellowness of late afternoon blends with the approaching termination of my flight. The heavy chores of the day -- the great difficulties of the flight -- are over. The remaining hours are downgrade, simply routine to be completed without excessive effort. There are ships to be seen for the looking -- four of them in sight at this moment. I have plenty of fuel, plenty of power. Every major obstacle is behind.
It's incredible that so much weight can be moved through the air so far. The gasoline left in my tanks when I reach France will weigh more than all the mail one of our DHs can carry between St. Louis and Chicago. Why, if I landed and refueled at an airport in Newfoundland, and then refueled again in Ireland, I could have brought thousands of letters to Paris. Let's see, that would have let me transform 1700 miles of fuel into mail sacks. At, say, 10 gallons to 100 miles, that would be 170 gallons, or more than 1000 pounds of fuel. And there'd be the saving in tank weight, too. By landing twice en route, I could have carried a huge pay load!
What limitless possibilities aviation holds when planes can fly nonstop between New York and Paris! The year will surely come when passengers and mail fly every day from America to Europe. Of course flying will cost much more than transportation by surface ship; but letters can be written on light-weight paper, and there'll be people with such pressing business that they can afford the higher price of passage. With multiengined flying boats, the safety of operation should be high. Weather will be the greatest problem. We'll have to find some way to fly through sleet and land in fog.
Planes may even replace automobiles someday, just as automobiles replaced horses. Possibly everyone will travel by air in another fifty years. I'm not sure I like the idea of millions of planes flying around overhead. Of course I want to see aviation develop into important branches of industry and commerce. But I love the sky's unbroken solitude. I don't like to think of it cluttered up by aircraft, as roads are cluttered up by cars. I feel like the western pioneer when he saw barbed-wire fence lines encroaching on his open plains. The success of his venture brought the end of the life he loved.
What is aviation leading to? What effect will it have on the lives of men? That it will bring revolutionary changes seems certain. There are moments when I fear the conditions aircraft will create. Sometimes, in lazy weather on the mail route, these problems stir uncomfortably in my mind –
The engine jerks against its mounting! I stiffen as though I'd had an electric shock. Irregular spluttering replaces the exhaust's sharp rhythm Thoughts rush back into the cockpit, traveling, in a fraction of a second, back from aviation's future, back from my ancestors in Ireland, back from the scattered squalls ahead, to a tense and waiting body, a body which instinctively pushed forward on the stick at the first sound of engine failure. And which now sits rigidly, waiting for command, anxious for instant action.
This is the start of a real forced landing. This is no idle speculation, no aimless wandering of the mind. Am I to be forced down on this trivial arm of ocean? Have I grown too confident, too arrogant, before my flight is done?
But of course! Nothing serious is wrong. The nose tank simply ran dry, as I intended it to. That's why I'm flying at a thousand feet instead of closer to the water. There's no reason to be startled. I turn on the center wing-tank, shut off the nose-tank valve, close the throttle and mixture control, and begin working the hand wobble pump. Meanwhile my eyes sweep the horizon for ships, and my mind notes down the essential elements for a forced landing at sea -- just in case the engine doesn't pick up again --
There are two ships in sight -- but miles away -- far beyond gliding range. They wouldn't even see the splash from my plane hitting the water -- might as well forget about them. The wind is still a little north of tail. That means a left turn -- not quite 180 degrees. I ought to fasten my safety belt, but that takes two hands more than I can spare.
The jerking and coughing stop. I ease the throttle forward. Power surges through the plane. The engine smooths out. The air speed rises. I take up course.
THE THIRTIETH HOUR
Over St. George's Channel
HOURS OF FUEL CONSUMED
NOSE TANK
¼ + 1-1-1-1-1 1-1-1
LEFT WING CENTER WING RIGHT WING
¼ + 1-1-1 ¼ + ¼ + 1-1-1
FUSELAGE
- 1-1-1-1-1 1-1-1-1
It's 12:52 p.m., New York time; about 5:30 here. I'm just over four hours from Paris. By turning the engine faster, I can reach France before darkness. If there should be a thick haze beneath low clouds over the English Channel it would be difficult to cross at night, for there'll be few lights, and no differences in shading between air and water. But if I can reach the French coast in daylight, then only fog or violent storms can hold me back from Le Bourget.
I close the mixture control, open the throttle to 1725 r.p.m., and watch the air speed mount to 110 miles an hour. That will take me to England well before sunset, and leave just enough time to get back to Ireland by dark if Cornwall is covered with fog.
Of course a return to Ireland would probably mean giving up a nonstop flight to Paris. There'd hardly be enough fuel left to circle through the night and then fly on for 600 miles after the fog cleared in the morning -- if it did. A half-hour ago, in the joy of my landfall, I felt that nothing would induce me to lose contact with the surface of the earth again. I decided that if England were covered with fog I'd turn back to Ireland and land, and that if I found France covered with fog, I'd circle the lights of some English city through the night and try to reach Le Bourget after sunrise. Then, the security I'd regained seemed more important than any success I could achieve. But with each passing minute the idea of turning back becomes more repulsive. I begin reconsidering my decision not to climb above a fog. There may be fog over England and the Channel while the continent beyond is clear. Everyone has read about the London fogs. After flying over storms and ocean, I'm not going to be defeated by a narrow strip of weather. How ashamed I'd feel if I turned back to Ireland when above Le Bourget there'd been an open sky. No, I won't let a little fog frighten me now. I'll fly over Paris by dead reckoning if need be, and then decide whether to go on or turn back.
Judging from the nose tank, I have enough fuel to reach Rome. I can certainly get that far if this tail wind keeps blowing. How surprised people back home would be if I cabled them from Rome instead of Paris! I unfold the map of Europe. Rome is about 700 miles beyond Paris, and not far south of my great-circle route extended eastward. It's a shame to land with nearly a thousand miles of fuel in the tanks. Why waste all that gasoline after carrying it across the ocean? I'm not sleepy any more. I've gained a second wind. I can sit here and fly on indefinitely. Why not throttle down again and fly eastward through another night? I could coax every mile of distance from the remaining fuel. I could circle Paris, if it's clear, dip my wings, and fly on to Italy and Rome. Think of it: a flight of almost forty-three hundred miles nonstop.
And if I can reach Rome, I can reach the dawn. I wouldn't have to worry about finding a place to land at night. But is my estimate of fuel correct? I haven't followed the power curves we laid out at San Diego. All I'm sure of is that the center wing-tank holds a twenty-five gallon reserve. What if I run short over the mountains of Switzerland or northern Italy in darkness? I'd have to find some city and circle its lights, hoping it had an airport with a beacon and that someone would hear me and turn it on.
I did that once, over Cleveland. I was delivering a HissoStandard from St. Louis. Mechanical troubles had held me down at Ft. Ben Harrison, in Indiana, and I arrived at my destination after nightfall. Since Cleveland was an air-mail stop, I expected to find a revolving beacon marking its airport. But the only flashes were along the lake front. They were clearly timed for ships.
I'd kept circling over the outskirts of the city, searching for dark areas on the earth large enough to hold an airport. There wasn't much gasoline left in my tanks, and I had to
keep enough of that in reserve to reach the farm lands south of the city. To give up the lines of street lights and turn south meant an almost certain crack-up; but I'd have a good chance of getting through unhurt. If I stayed too long hunting for the airport and ran out of fuel, I'd have to stall down among telephone poles and houses. Then, I'd be lucky if I weren't killed. The Standard wasn't equipped for night flying. It had no lights and no flares -- But neither has the Spirit of St. Louis.
I remember banking over two vacant city blocks large enough to land on. Lamps along a sidewalk showed small semicircles of grass that gave me some perspective. But a street divided the area in half, and even if the ground I couldn't see were smooth I'd have broken my landing gear rolling across it.
Suddenly there was a flash from the ground about two miles to the west. I straightened out the wings and waited. Another flash I banked toward it. Yes, it was the mail field. Floodlights blinked on as I approached.
"Say, do you make a practice of flying around unannounced after dark?" the chief postal clerk had asked after I landed.
"I thought mail beacons were turned on all night," I'd countered.
"No sir, not ours. When there aren't any planes coming in we turn it off. What's the use wasting electricity?"
"How did you happen to turn it on?" I asked.
"Some fellow up the line telephoned the post office. He said there was a plane flying around overhead and he thought the pilot was lost. Well, guess we might as well turn it off again now."
I don't want to find myself low on fuel tonight, circling some European city with the Spirit of St. Louis. No, this flight is from New York to Paris; I planned and organized it with the intention of landing at Paris. I didn't start out to see how far I could fly. If Paris is covered with fog, that's different; then I can go on with a clear conscience. But first I must exert every effort to land at the destination I set.
All readings are normal. The sky is broken, the sea light, the horizon veiled in haze. Without even bending forward, from my altitude of 1500 feet, I count half-a-dozen ships. At any moment now England's shore line will be in sight.
How different from that long uncertainty of waiting for the Irish coast, not knowing either my latitude or longitude, or whether the course I followed lay across it. Here, it's a matter- of minutes at most. There's no question, no longer the slightest doubt in my mind. Within the next ten minutes, England will rise to view. It will be no mirage. It will have no tantalizing islands made of mist.
For aviators approaching from the sea, a coast line chooses between two methods of appearing. When air is crystal clear it announces itself delicately, subtly, as a fine, dark line, barely breaking the evenness of the horizon; rising, growing, flowering gradually, giving one plenty of time to adjust to its presence, its shades of color, its intricacies of character and shape. But in heavy haze or fog it can loom up with terrifying suddenness, not even leaving time to turn from its crushing impact. On one day, it uses the curvature of the earth as a cloak. On another, it veils itself with different shades of mist and weather. Welcoming hills in sunlight are deadly bluffs in storm; and a summit higher than the rest may be either a flyer's beacon or his grave. Therefore the first sight of land is an omen of great significance.
The coast of England is well above the horizon when I see its outline, pale and whitish in the haze. Then there's no fog over Cornwall. I can let go of Ireland completely, and move forward another notch in the ratchet of my mind. No matter what happens now, I'll not return to those hilly, bouldered fields for safety, or land in the waves beside some Celtic lighthouse keeper's home. If by any dwindling chance I still have to turn back from Paris, I now have England for a haven.
Above the sheer Cornish cliffs, rising straight up out of the sea, farm fields break off abruptly where their soil has tumbled down into encroaching waves. As a schoolboy I read of the slowly changing surface of the earth, of clam fossils found on hilltops, of glaciers building and melting, of land masses that disappeared, of drifting continents and dried-up seas. But all these things were measured on a time scale that made little impression on my mind -- hundreds of centuries – ages before the Sphinx was built. Here, I see the earth actually in the modeling, changing in terms of time I understand. The signs below are fresh, unmistakable. The road, and little houses and barns on top of the cliff, are all set back from the precipice, leaving a strip of green fields along the edge, a few generations' worth of land to delay the inevitable collapse into sea -- an offering to the god of the ocean.