Charles A. Lindbergh: The Life of the "Lone Eagle" in Photographs

CHARLES A. LINDBERGH

A PHOTOGRAPHIC ALBUM

JOSHUA STOFF

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

New York

Copyright

Copyright © 1995 by Joshua Stoff.

All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright Conventions.

Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario.

Published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company, Ltd., 3 The Lanchesters, 162-164 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 9ER.

Bibliographical Note

Charles A. Lindbergh: A Photographic Album is a new work, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 1995.

Edited by Alan Weissman

Designed by Jeanne Joudry

An index appears on pages 163-165.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stoff, Joshua.

Charles A. Lindbergh : a photographic album / Joshua Stoff.

    p. cm.

Includes index.

eISBN 13: 978-0-486-15397-1

1. Lindbergh, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1902-1974—Portraits.

2. Air pilots—United States—Biography. I. Title.

TL540.L5S76    1995

629.13’92—dc20

94-12121

[B]

CIP

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

Contents

Introduction

Charles A. Lindbergh: A Photographic Album

Index

Introduction

Almost literally overnight, Charles A. Lindbergh was transformed from an obscure airmail pilot into the most famous aviator in the world. At the age of 25, he had accomplished what no man had done before, having flown nonstop from New York to Paris, 3,600 miles across the cold waters of the Atlantic. Moreover, he did it alone, in a small single-engine monoplane. The danger and daring of such a feat are highlighted by the fact that to this day no one else has flown alone, nonstop, from New York to Paris in a single-engine plane. Not only did this accomplishment make Lindbergh a hero and one of the most lionized personalities in the world for decades, it popularized, even revolutionized aviation like no other single event before or since, with the possible exception of the pioneering flight of the Wright brothers. Now, more than 65 years later, Lindbergh’s achievement— as well as other events in his life, at least one of them tragic—justly continues to receive attention in new books and articles added to the stream of writings that have made him one of the most studied and celebrated heroes in American history.

Lindbergh’s grandfather, August Lindbergh, was a lawyer and a reform member of the Swedish parliament who emigrated to Minnesota when Charles’s father was an infant. Charles’s father, Charles August Lindbergh, Sr. (distinguished here as Sr. from his son—Jr.—though their names were not precisely the same), also became a lawyer and in 1884 established a practice in Little Falls, Minnesota, living on a 120-acre farm there. In 1901 he married a local schoolteacher, Miss Evangeline Lodge Land. On February 4, 1902, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was born in his maternal grandparents’ house in Detroit. Two months later, he was taken to Little Falls.

Charles’s maternal grandfather, Dr. (so called though he had never formally taken a degree) Charles H. Land, a pioneer dentist, scientist and inventor, was a major formative influence on his young grandson. Lindbergh’s mother, with a degree in chemistry from the University of Michigan, was exceptionally well educated for a woman of her day, and she further encouraged her son’s interest in science. Outings with his father sparked a love in young Charles for the robust outdoor life. In Minnesota, encouraged to be self-sufficient, Charles was taught to shoot at age six, though he could hardly lift his rifle. At age eleven Charles was taught to drive and became fascinated by the inner working of automobiles. During his childhood he was enrolled in eleven different schools, but he altogether disliked every one of them. Always a loner, he preferred to pursue his favorite studies on his own.

Charles Lindbergh, Sr., a Roosevelt Republican with a radical, reformist bent, became deeply committed to social reform and was elected to Congress in 1906. Thereafter the family spent much of the year in Washington, D.C. When war broke out in Europe, Congressman Lindbergh, critical of the political influence of big business, opposed American entry into World War I, which he saw as a connivance solely in the interests of the giant corporate trusts and Wall Street financial institutions. His father’s political position undoubtedly had a heavy influence on Charles Junior’s later thinking.

During his last two years in Little Falls, Charles ran his father’s farm, and then in 1920 he entered the University of Wisconsin at Madison to study engineering. Less than two years later, he gave up school to learn to fly.

Lindbergh decided upon a career in aviation because flying seemed an ideal combination of his interests in science and the outdoors. After receiving informal flying instruction in Nebraska in 1922, he performed for a time with a Midwestern barnstorming troupe. In 1923, with financial assistance from his father, Charles purchased his first airplane, a World War I surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jenny. For a while he barnstormed alone in his Jenny, but then, tired of its limitations and yearning to fly newer, more advanced aircraft, he joined the Army Air Service, which offered the only opportunity to do this.

At training fields in Texas in 1924 and 1925, flying Cadet Lindbergh found that without qualifying grades he could not pass the tests to become a commissioned pilot. For the first time he realized the importance of hard study in achieving his goals, and the formerly indifferent student now aimed at perfection, became a dedicated scholar and graduated first in his class. In March 1925 he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Army Reserve. On the way to this goal he had had considerable practical flying experience as well, sometimes risking his life, as when he made a narrow escape by parachute in a midair collision. In June he made a second emergency parachute jump after a civil airplane he was testing refused to come out of a spin.

After several months of instructing in the St. Louis area, Lindbergh was appointed chief pilot of the Robertson Aircraft Corporation, leading to his initiating the first airmail flight between St. Louis and Chicago in April 1926. Thereafter, Lindbergh regularly flew this mail run in a De Havilland DH-4.

Lack of proper instrumentation, landing fields, lighting devices and accurate weather forecasts all made flying the mail extremely dangerous at this time. Twice Lindbergh was forced to make emergency parachute jumps after running out of fuel at night in poor weather.

At least a pilot had time to himself. It was during the lonely hours flying the mail at night that Lindbergh conceived the idea of competing for the Orteig Prize of $25,000, offered in 1919 for the first nonstop flight between Paris and New York. Lindbergh was intrigued by the idea of publicly demonstrating how the airplane could safely link the New World with the Old, at the same time giving the civilian pilot enhanced credibility. Winning the money was not his prime objective; the Orteig Prize would barely cover the cost of the plane, the fuel and all necessary equipment. As for the danger, Lindbergh could not imagine the weather being worse or the flight more dangerous than what he had already experienced flying the mail.

Not luck, as claimed by the press, but experience and expert planning insured the success of Lindbergh’s flight. Every detail was carefully thought out. He decided upon a single-engine plane because it would have greater range than a multiengine plane and could be more streamlined, as the engine would be in the nose. Furthermore, Lindbergh felt