returned from an evening out enjoying the company of others. Thirsty from the heat and alcohol, Gurney took up the jug of what he thought was ice water and poured it down his throat. However, Lindbergh had replaced the ice water with kerosene. Gurney was rushed to the hospital, suffered serious throat, stomach and intestinal burns, and nearly died from the ingestion.
Nelson, Love and Gurney had all in turn shared a room with Lindbergh. They all moved out. Love did so after he and his girlfriend had rigged up Lindbergh's bed and caused it to collapse when he got into it. Lindbergh said nothing to them that night but the next day told Love to move out.
There was an element of danger to the early air mail routes. But despite the lack of safety equipment most pilots attempted to operate in as safe and prudent a manner as the existing technology would allow.
Not so with Lindbergh. He would routinely set off on a mail run in weather conditions in which there was little doubt that his destination would be completely fogged in. Twice he flew into blizzards over Chicago and simply grabbed the mail pouch and parachuted out, leaving his plane to crash wherever it might end up. Upon reaching the ground he hopped a train with his pouch to continue his run.
However, not every flight posed a hazard. On clear days, when weather was not a factor, the flights provided ample opportunity for Lindbergh to contemplate his future. It was during such a flight that he first got the idea that, not only were transcontinental flights possible but so too was a transatlantic one. Lindbergh increasingly dwelled on this idea. In September of 1926 he watched a news reel which had a clip about the Orteig Prize.
Raymond Orteig, a Frenchman who operated several hotels in New York, had offered $25,000 to the first flyer or group of flyers "who shall cross the Atlantic in a land or water aircraft (heavier than air) from Paris or the shores of France to New York, or from New York to Paris or the shores of France, without stop."
The offer had first been made in 1919 and stipulated that the flight must take place within five years. This was beyond the capabilities of any plane then built and although two people had successfully crossed the Atlantic already by making several stops, the prize was reoffered by Orteig at the urging of a French newspaper.
Lindbergh decided that he would attempt the flight. Several had already perished in the process. The French ace Rene Fonck had put together significant financial backing for he and a crew of three others to fly from New York to Paris in a mammoth trimotored plane built by Sikorsky. They crashed on take off from Roosevelt Field, and two of the crew members died in the ensuing flames.
Lindbergh knew that planes must be made lighter and more streamlined for such a trip, not heavier and saddled with excess weight and crew members. He convinced a group of St. Louis businessmen to put up $10,000 to have a plane designed, built and delivered to New York in time for him to be the first to cross the Atlantic. He would do it alone. It would be a monoplane, equipped with a single powerful engine, stripped of all unnecessary weight. The gas tank would be in front of the cockpit, to cushion the possibility of injury in a crash. It would be fast, and designed for endurance.
The plane was built by a group of young, enthusiastic, bright and dedicated men at the Ryan Aircraft Company in San Diego, California. Lindbergh lived there and worked with them during construction. They felt the pressure to get the plane completed because several others had been planning the trip, including the popular Commander Byrd in a joint venture with the great Anthony J. Fokker. They were planning to fly in a trimotored plane. It crashed during a test flight.
The nation and the world took a great deal of interest in the attempts to cross the Atlantic. When another team, Captains Nungesser and Francois Coli, departed Paris on the 8th of May in a biplane, news organizations around the world tracked their progress. Radio stations interrupted their programming to give reports of sightings; all of which turned out to be false. The pilots disappeared and were never heard from again.
On May 10, 1927 Lindbergh took off from San Diego, headed for New York in his new plane, the Spirit of St. Louis. He made record time to St. Louis where he was to make a breakfast and dinner appearance with his benefactors. Lindbergh pointed out that time was of the essence, however, and left the same day for Curtis Field on Long Island.
He was unprepared for the media who awaited his arrival and astonished at how they pushed and pulled each other, how they shouted instructions to him on how to pose with the plane, and to his mind, asked him ridiculous and irrelevant questions.
It was here that Lindbergh began his long and enduring "lovehate" relationship with the press. "The press," Lindbergh wrote, "would increase my personal influence and earning capacity. I found it exhilarating to see my name in print on the front pages of America's greatest newspapers, and I enjoyed reading the words of praise about my transcontinental flight... But I was shocked by the inaccuracy and sensationalism of many of the articles resulting from my interviews... Much the papers printed seemed not only baseless but also useless."8
When his mother came to New York to join him before his flight she and Lindbergh posed together for the press. But as Lindbergh would report it, they refused to take the "maudlin position some of them had asked for."9 He was outraged the next day to see that through composite photography they ran such a picture anyway. The "maudlin" position they refused to take was Lindbergh giving his mother a kiss on the cheek.
This lovehate relationship with the media continued throughout Lindbergh's life. When he needed or wanted the press he was friendly with reporters. When they wrote complimentary or positive pieces about him, he would cooperate. But if he did not want them to ask questions, or if the press were the least bit critical, they were pariahs and "distasteful."
Yet, Lindbergh never hesitated to use the press whenever he felt it would further one of his objectives. At such times he was courteous, polite and even solicitous.
Very early on the morning on May 20, 1927, the weather was finally breaking over the north Atlantic. Lindbergh had the Spirit of St. Louis towed from Curtis to Roosevelt Field for takeoff. In a light drizzle, weighing 5,250 pounds, Lindbergh and machine lifted into the sky bound for Paris. It was a flight which would forever change the nature of aviation. No longer would winged transportation be bound by the borders of the country. Shortly after, continents and people were linked by a method of travel many saw then only as a form of amusement and which insurance companies, only four years earlier, had believed had no future. While Lindbergh may have been prepared to usher in the age of aviation, he was vastly unprepared for the attention his flight received.
CHAPTER III
The flight of the Spirit of St. Louis has been forever imprinted in the American psyche. An event which now seems commonplace was wondrous and daring in 1927. After 33 and onehalf hours in the air, Lindbergh touched down at Le Bourget field in Paris. The flight shrunk the oceans and all of humanity and it coalesced American pride in its emerging technological power.
In 1990, "Dear Abby" devoted a special column to people who remembered the Lindbergh landing. "I was a student at the Sorbonne," a reader wrote, "when the radio announced that Lindbergh had been sighted over Ireland and would be landing in Paris in a few hours. A classmate and I took a bus to the airport. We were among the thousands of spectators restrained behind a wire fence. When Lindbergh landed, the crowd pushed the fence over and ran out on the field. The police had to rescue him from his enthusiastic admirers."
Another wrote, "I was at the theater when an announcement was made at intermission that Lindy had landed safely in Paris. Everyone cheered and left the theater to join a wild celebration in the streets, dancing and hugging strangers! The next day, Lindy was honored with a huge parade down the ChampsElysees. It was one of the highlights of my life. I am 93 now, and an American citizen living in New Jersey."10
His reception
