The Spirit of ST Louis (59 page)

I would say it all casually, just as though I'd landed on a routine mail flight from Chicago.

THE THIRTY-THIRD HOUR
Over France

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

Almost thirty-five hundred miles from New York. I've broken the world's distance record for a nonstop airplane flight. The fuselage tank must be almost empty; and now there's no need to run it dry. I turn on the right wing-tank. In one hour more I should see the lights of Paris.

The sea is calm. Southward, just out of gliding range, lies the dusk-touched coast of Normandy. Little boats sail in toward shore, apparently motionless on the surface, leaving only their wakes as signs of movement to an airman's eye. A faint point of land, far ahead on my left, marks the location of Le Havre. The expanse of water, extending on eastward below it, is the estuary of the Seine.

I cross the coast again exactly on course, over Deauville. All the east foreshadows night. Day now belongs only to the western sky, still red with sunset. What more I see of France, before I land, will be in this long twilight of late spring. I nose the Spirit of St. Louis lower, while I study the farms and villages -- the signs I can't read, the narrow, shop-lined streets, the walled-in barnyards. Fields are well groomed, fertile, and peaceful -- larger than those of England. It's not hard to see how French farmers make a living; and there are plenty of places where I could land in emergency without cracking up.

People come running out as I skim low over their houses -- blue-jeaned peasants, white-aproned wives, children scrambling between them, all bareheaded and looking as though they'd jumped up from the supper table to search for the noise above their roofs. Four-twenty on the clock. That's nine-twenty here. Why, it's past suppertime! I hold the stick with my knees, untwist the neck of the paper bag, and pull out a sandwich -- my first food since take-off. The Spirit of St. Louis noses up. I push the stick forward, clamp it between my knees again, and uncork the canteen. I can drink all the water I want, now -- plenty more below if I should be forced down between here and Paris. But how flat the sandwich tastes! Bread and meat never touched my tongue like this before. It's an effort even to swallow. I'm hungry, because I go on eating, but I have to wash each mouthful down with water.

One sandwich is enough. I brush the crumbs off my lap. I start to throw the wrapping through the window -- no, these fields are so clean and fresh it's a shame to scatter them with paper. I crunch it up and stuff it back in the brown bag. I don't want the litter from a sandwich to symbolize my first contact with France.

All details on the ground are masking out in night. Color is gone. Only shades remain -- woods darker than fields; hedgerows, lines of black. Lights twinkle in villages and blink in farmhouse windows. My instruments are luminous again. The rest of the flight will be in darkness. But I can't miss Paris, even if I find no other check point on my route. I'm too close. The sky's too clear. The city's too large.

I ease back on the stick and climb -- to five hundred -- to a thousand – -- to two thousand feet. A light flashes from the darkness, miles ahead. Could it be -- I stare at the area from which it came, and wait. On our mail route at home, you count even between flashes -- Another flash. Yes, it's an air beacon! And there are two more, blinking dimly in the distance, to the left. It must be the airway between London and Paris! Nobody told me it had lights.

From now on everything will be as simple as flying in to Chicago on a clear night. That line of beacons is converging with my course. Where the two lines meet -- the beacons and my course -- less than a hundred miles ahead -- lies Paris. I can project them over the horizon, into the night, and already see the city in my mind's eye. Within half an hour, its glow will lighten the southeastern sky.

Down under my left wing, angling in from the north, winding through fields submerged in night, comes the Seine, shimmering back to the sky the faint remaining light of evening.

With my position known and my compass set, with the air clear and a river and an airway to lead me in, nothing but engine failure can keep me now from reaching Paris. The engine is running perfectly -- I check the switches again.

The Spirit of St. Louis is a wonderful plane. It's like a living creature, gliding along smoothly, happily, as though a successful flight means as much to it as to me, as though we shared our experiences together, each feeling beauty, life, and death as keenly, each dependent on the other's loyalty. We have made this flight across the ocean, not I or it.

I throw my flashlight on the engine instruments. Every needle is in place. For almost thirty-three hours, not one of them has varied from its normal reading -- except when the nose tank ran dry. For every minute I've flown there have been more than seven thousand explosions in the cylinders, yet not a single one has missed.

I'm leveled off at four thousand feet, watching for the luminosity in the sky ahead that will mark the city of Paris. Within the hour, I'll land. The dot on my map will become Paris itself, with its airport, hangars, and floodlights, and mechanics running out to guide me in. All over the ground below there are clusters of lights. Large clusters are cities; small ones, towns and villages; pin points are buildings on a farm. I can image that I'm looking through the earth to the heavens on the other side. Paris will be a great galaxy lighting up the night.

Within the hour I'll land, and strangely enough I'm in no hurry to have it pass. I haven't the slightest desire to sleep. My eyes are no longer salted stones. There's not an ache in my body. The night is cool and safe. I want to sit quietly in this cockpit and let the realization of my completed flight sink in. Europe is below; Paris, just over the earth's curve in the night ahead -- a few minutes more of flight. It's like struggling up a mountain after a rare flower, and then, when you have it within arm's reach, realizing that satisfaction and happiness lie more in the finding than the plucking. Plucking and withering are inseparable. I want to prolong this culminating experience of my flight. I almost wish Paris were a few more hours away. It's a shame to land with the night so clear and so much fuel in my tanks.

I'm still flying at four thousand feet when I see it, that scarcely perceptible glow, as though the moon had rushed ahead of schedule. Paris is rising over the edge of the earth. It's almost thirty-three hours from my take-off on Long Island. As minutes pass, myriad pin points of light emerge, a patch of starlit earth under a starlit sky -- the lamps of Paris -- straight lines of lights, curving lines of lights, squares of lights, black spaces in between. Gradually avenues, parks, and buildings take outline form; and there, far below, a little offset from the center, is a column of lights pointing upward, changing angles as I fly -- the Eiffel Tower. I circle once above it, and turn northeastward toward Le Bourget.

THE THIRTY-FOURTH HOUR
Over France

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 + 1-1-1-1

FUSELAGE

Four fifty-two on the clock. That's 9:52, Paris time. Le Bourg et isn't shown on my map. No one I talked to back home had more than a general idea of its location. "It's a big airport," I was told. "You can't miss it. Just fly northeast from the city." So I penciled a circle on my map, about where Le Bourget ought to be; and now the Spirit of St. Louis is over the outskirts of Paris, pointed toward the center of that circle.

I look ahead. A beacon should be flashing on such a large and important airport. But the nearest beacon I see is fully twenty miles away, and west instead of east of Paris. I bank slightly, so I can search the earth directly ahead. There's no flash. But I'm flying at four thousand feet. The beacon may be sweeping the horizon. I'm probably far above its beam. It's probably like the beacons on our mail route, set low to guide pilots wedging underneath clouds and storm, not for those who fly high through starlit nights. From my altitude. I shouldn't be hunting for a beacon, but for a darkened patch of ground, bordered by straight-lined, regularly spaced points of light, with a few green and red points among the yellow; that's how a landing field should look from four thousand feet.

Yes, there's a black patch to my left, large enough to be an airport. And there are lights all around it. But they're neither straight nor regularly spaced, and some are strangely crowded together. But if that's not Le Bourget, where else can it be? There's no other suitable grouping of lights -- unless the location I've marked on my map is entirely wrong. I bank left to pass overhead. Are those floodlights, in one corner of the dark area? If they are, they're awfully weak. They're hardly bright enough to be for landing aircraft. But don't I see the ends of hangars over at one side? Or are they just the buildings of some factory?

It looks like an airport. But why would an airport be placed in such a congested section? There are thousands of lights along one side. They probably come from a large factory. Surely Le Bourget wouldn't have a factory that size right next to it. I'm almost overhead now. I can see no warning lights, no approach lights, and no revolving beacon. Looking straight down on a beacon, one can see the diffused light from its beam sweeping the ground under the tower. But those are floodlights, and they show the edge of a field. Maybe the French turn out their beacons when no planes are due, like that air-mail field at Cleveland. And even the people who think I have a chance of reaching Paris won't expect me here so soon. But why leave floodlights burning, and not the boundary lights and beacon? Of course I must remember I'm over Europe, where customs are strange.

This is right in the direction where Le Bourget ought to be; but I expected to find it farther out from the city. I'll fly on northeast a few miles more. Then, if I see nothing else that looks like an airport, I'll come back and circle at lower altitude.

Five minutes have passed. Only the lights of small towns and country homes breaks the blackness of the earth. I turn back on my course, throttle down slightly, and begin a slow descent.

The altimeter shows two thousand feet when I approach the lights again. Close to a large city in an unknown country, it's best not to fly too low. There may be hills with high radio towers on top of them. There are bound to be radio towers somewhere around Paris. I point my pocket flashlight toward the ground, and key out a message. There's no response.

I circle. Yes, it's definitely an airport. I see part of a concrete apron in front of a large, half-open door. But is it Le Bourget? Well, at least it's a Paris airport. That's the important thing. It's Paris I set out for. If I land on the wrong

field, it won't be too serious an error -- as long as I land safely. I look around once more for other floodlights or a beacon. There are none -- nothing even worth flying over to investigate. I spiral lower, left wing down, keeping close to the edge of the field. There aren't likely to be any radio towers nearby. I'll give those lights along the southern border a wide berth when I come in to land. There may be high factory chimneys rising among them.

From each changed angle, as I bank, new details emerge from night and shadow. I see the corners of big hangars, now outlined vaguely, near the floodlights -- a line of them. 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. It's a huge airport. The floodlights show only a small corner. It must be Le Bourget.

I'll drag the field from low altitude to make sure its surface is clear -- that no hay-making machinery, cattle, sheep, or obstruction flags are in the way. After that, everyone down there will know I want to land. If they have any more lights, they switch them on. I shift fuel valves to the center wing-tank, sweep my flashlight over the instrument board in a final check, fasten my safety belt, and nose the Spirit of St. Louis down into a gradually descending spiral.

I circle several times while I lose altitude, trying to penetrate the shadows from different vantage points, getting the lay of the land as well as I can in darkness. At one thousand feet I discover the wind sock, dimly lighted, on top of some building. It's bulged, but far from stiff. That means a gentle, constant wind, not over ten or fifteen miles an hour. My landing direction will be over the floodlights, angling away from the hangar line. Why circle any longer? That's all the information I need. No matter how hard I try, my eyes can't penetrate the blanket of night over the central portion of the field.

I straighten out my wings and let the throttled engine drag me on beyond the leeward border. Now the steep bank into wind, and the dive toward ground. But how strange it is, this descent. I'm wide awake, but the feel of my plane has not returned. Then I must hold excess speed -- take no chance of stalling or of the engine loading up. My movements are

mechanical, uncoordinated, as though I were coming down at the end of my first solo.