The Flight Read online

  DEDICATION

  For those with the spirit to dream, to face the

  unknown, and the courage to conquer fear

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  1 The First Hours

  2 Hope

  3 Hour Five

  4 Doorway to the Atlantic

  PART TWO

  5 Innocence Lost: Snapshots of a Decade

  6 The Empire of the Night

  7 Phantoms in the Mist

  PART THREE

  8 Crossing the Bridge

  9 Dreams

  10 A New Reality

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary

  Selected Bibliography

  Notes and Sources

  Index

  Photos Section

  About the Author

  Also by Dan Hampton

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  CHARLES AUGUSTUS LINDBERGH was a complicated man and, in later years, certainly a controversial one. The Flight is a detailed account of his extraordinary 1927 flight from Long Island to Paris—an achievement that captured the world’s attention like few other events in history and made Lindbergh perhaps the most celebrated man of his time. Pertinent aspects of Lindbergh’s childhood, character, and later years are touched upon when they serve to explain the man as we see him in 1927, but this work is not a judgment of the balance of his life. My purpose in these pages is to put the reader into the cockpit of the Spirit of St. Louis during those thirty-three and a half hours on May 20 and 21, 1927, and to fly along with him. No other book about this man and this flight has been written from the cockpit point of view by a fellow aviator with the desire to have us all share his triumph, to be there as the frontier of aviation is changed forever.

  After coming to know Charles Lindbergh through his family recollections, personal artifacts, and most of all through his own writings, I learned that much of what I’d been taught was incorrect, or at best, incomplete. He was neither naïve nor simplistic, although in some ways he was an innocent. Lindbergh made mistakes, both personal and professional, yet who among us has not? Who among us, being thrust into instant wealth and global celebrity, would react better? Fame overwhelmed him and, though he learned to eventually take credit for his remarkable accomplishment, publicity was a curse he never quite overcame. His loss of privacy, as well as to some degree the loss of himself, is something that should have been expected from such a feat, but Lindbergh never considered how success would change his life—or what it would cost.

  His name became immortal, and his fortune immense, yet was it worth the price? This is a question with no answer, at least not one we can give. The tragedy of losing a child is something no parent should have to bear, and surely this would not have occurred had he not been Charles Lindbergh. He would also not have incurred the wrath of a president, and all the ramifications that came back to him. If he had not been an eminent public figure would his politics, comments, and opinions have been amplified and distorted as they were? Very likely not. I mention these events so the intelligent reader is aware that they exist, and is aware that this book is not blind adulation, but an account of one very human man and his extraordinary flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

  Regardless of what judgments are passed on Lindbergh, no one can dispute the raw courage and skill he showed the world in May 1927. Others had attempted this most dangerous of exploits, and failed, and many passed into relative oblivion. Lindbergh’s epic flight brought him fame, fortune, love, and tragedy. Someone else, a Richard Byrd or Clarence Chamberlin perhaps, could have accomplished the flight first, but Charles Lindbergh was the one who did it. In the end, he took the chance, risked everything, and prevailed.

  In writing this book I was incalculably aided by the man himself, for having Lindbergh’s own thoughts and observations with me was irreplaceable. All first-person quotes, including internal dialog, are drawn from Lindbergh’s own recollections. He was a meticulous note taker, and his papers are wonderfully preserved in the Yale University Library, in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Missouri Historical Society, in St. Louis. The thoughts and expressions in the text are credited in the Notes and Sources section of this book. Most will be found in Lindbergh’s 1953 Spirit of St. Louis, but his Wartime Journals was also exceptionally detailed. Perhaps the best place to start with Lindbergh himself is with the posthumously published Autobiography of Values; his writing had fully matured, and even accounting for the benefit of hindsight, his prose is clear, personal, and illuminating. There are other fine books on the subject, notably A. Scott Berg’s Lindbergh, though Berg devotes just a few pages to the flight itself.

  As for descriptions of the vistas and terrain he overflew, particularly Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the European landfalls, not to mention the vast, empty stretches of the northern Atlantic Ocean, I was fortunate to have seen them myself, having made solo transatlantic flights many times while piloting single-seat F-16s during my twenty years with the United States Air Force. Often a word from “Slim,” to use one of Lindbergh’s nicknames, would trigger a memory, and I felt less like an author and more like I was back in the air over the Atlantic—just another pilot along for the ride.

  So in reading this book, admire the bravery necessary to survive those lonely, dangerous, and uncertain hours. Put yourself in a small, fabric-covered cockpit in a thousand-mile storm over the Atlantic at night and learn what you didn’t know about the man and his dream.

  Above all else, Charles Lindbergh believed in the power of aviation: its untapped potential and inherent capacity to join peoples, advance technology, and bring the world closer together. That passion and courage define a spirit that all Americans can claim through Charles Lindbergh and that we, as humans, can collectively share.

  Dan Hampton

  New Hampshire, 2016

  PROLOGUE

  Le Bourget Field, Paris

  May 8, 1927, 5:18 A.M.

  THOUSANDS OF CHINS tilted back as the large, pale biplane lumbered heavily into the damp morning air above the French capital. Clearing the airfield, it began a smooth, climbing left turn away from the clouds darkening the eastern horizon. Called L’Oiseau Blanc, or the “White Bird,” the Levasseur PL-8 had been built for a single purpose—to be the first powered aircraft to fly more than 3,600 miles nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the plane continued turning northwest, its chalk-colored wings very plain against the gray clouds. Brighter was a brief splash of yellow from the cockpit as L’Oiseau Blanc rolled up steeply over the little village of Gonesse. Even though they were expecting it, the crowd gasped when the undercarriage suddenly detached, tumbling through the air into the wet fields below. Jettisoning the 270-pound landing gear was a well-publicized part of the plan as this reduced weight and drag and saved precious fuel. Besides, wheels weren’t necessary to land on water and that was precisely what the two Frenchmen intended to do: set the White Bird down in New York Harbor beneath the Statue of Liberty and claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize for the first nonstop flight between Paris and New York.

  It was audacious, yet in 1927 no less was expected from Charles Eugène Jules Marie Nungesser and François Coli, France’s leading aviators. Both men had been French Air Service fighter pilots, with Nungesser finishing the Great War as France’s third-highest-scoring ace. When asked about the dangers of the transatlantic flight, Nungesser calmly replied, “A cœur vaillant rien d’impossible.” To the valiant heart nothing is impossible.

  Handsome and scarred, Nungesser had a panache and contemptuous disregar
d for danger that personified the image of French military manhood. He inspired adoring coverage by the French press, who seemed to love everything about the former race car driver, stunt pilot, and military hero. After the war he had married Consuelo “Connie” Hatmaker, a glamorous American heiress, and starred in The Sky Raider, a Hollywood motion picture. The world, particularly France, adored him and never more than that May morning as he set out to conquer the unconquerable Atlantic Ocean.

  When the biplane rolled out to level flight, the proud red, white, and blue tricolor could be easily seen on the tail. Less visible was the “Black Heart” painted on the fuselage just aft of the open cockpit. Though the crowd couldn’t see the details they knew Nungesser’s “Coeur Noir” well: a white skull and crossbones surmounted by a coffin and flanked by a pair of lighted candles. It was a personal crest, emblazoned on his silver Nieuport 17 fighter during the war, showing Nungesser’s blatant challenge toward mankind’s greatest mortal fear: death.

  Heading northwest, the plane disappeared into the chilly dawn, the roar of its Lorraine-Dietrich engine fading as it flew on toward Normandy. Without an enclosed cockpit, both men were hunched down out of the cold air behind a large, four-and-a-half-foot windscreen. Their bright yellow, heavy-weather flying suits were fur lined and electrically heated to stave off freezing winds aloft. Nungesser’s navigator, François Coli, was on the right side, seated a bit behind and slightly lower than the pilot. During the war Coli had lost an eye, thus acquiring the nickname the “One-Eyed Devil,” but he had also once been a sea captain and was intimately familiar with maritime navigation, particularly in the North Atlantic. An accomplished pilot himself, Coli was a superb navigator, and it was he who had worked out the route’s details.

  Coli’s tools included the very latest technical instruments: a ground speed indicator that corrected the airspeed indicator for wind; a Le Prieur navigraph to give surface alerts over water; and a Coutinho sextant for astral navigation. Gago Coutinho, the Portuguese aviator who’d first flown across the South Atlantic in 1922, had modified a maritime sextant with an artificial horizon so it could be used effectively in flight. But the navigator’s main instrument was a large Krauss-Morel compass. In L’Oiseau Blanc it was horizontally mounted, similar to a binnacle that Coli would’ve used aboard ship. Placed in front of the stick, both men could see it plainly and follow the plotted course. Day or night, with clear skies, Coli could also check their position trigonometrically using his sextant. With a precise heading, two chronometers for measuring elapsed time, and a ground speed indicator the White Bird’s position would always be known.

  Charles Nungesser sat in the left seat with the throttle lever and mixture control beside him on the bulkhead. The control stick was long, slim, and topped with a pommel for easy gripping. Facing him was a panel dotted with gauges for monitoring oil temperature, and fuel, and a tachometer showing the engine’s revolutions per minute. Among his flight instruments were a Chauvin & Arnoux bank indicator, a vertical velocity indicator, and a Badin-Aéra flight controller.

  The White Bird had been completed in early April, and both men had then spent the next twenty-two days accomplishing a series of flight tests in preparation for the crossing. Operating primarily from Villacoublay, southwest of Paris, Nungesser had reached a top speed of 124 miles per hour with a practical ceiling of 19,800 feet. During testing he hadn’t attempted a fully loaded, maximum-weight takeoff, preferring to risk this only once on the actual flight. Supremely confident in his own abilities and Coli’s skills as a navigator, he was certain it could be done with no issues. The French ace felt they were ready but would state to the press on May 4, 1927, “The least negligence, the least mistake, the least impatience could make everything fail.”

  CROSSING THE COASTLINE near Étretat, Nungesser and Coli continued over the English Channel, where they were observed and reported by a British submarine.* For the next several hours scores of keen observers spotted the paunchy aircraft as Weymouth, Exeter, and dozens of other southern English towns passed under its wings. When they reached the island’s west coast, the squat white tower of Hartland Point lighthouse would have been clearly visible as the two Frenchmen flew out over the Bristol Channel. With its immense 48-foot wingspan, the 11,102-pound L’Oiseau Blanc was roughly the same width as current-day airliners. It was easy to see. Growling powerfully, the 450-horsepower Lorraine-Dietrich motor could be plainly heard above the crash of waves and the screaming gulls.

  Without landing gear, the plane could comfortably maintain a 110 mph cruise speed, which Nungesser intended to hold. But there were always winds, and this was one reason the pilots had chosen an east-west Atlantic crossing, rather than the converse. Coli had purposely waited for a low-pressure weather system when the usual westerly winds would be reversed, and today, May 8, there was just such an area over their proposed route. This would produce an easterly, quartering tailwind that would push the White Bird across the Atlantic rather than slow it down. Flying east to west also meant two-thirds of their fuel load would be consumed by the time they reached Newfoundland, so the plane would be much lighter and better able to cope with severe weather in the area.

  When asked why he’d planned such a route, Coli simply shrugged and said, “Because we are French! If we go there to come here it would appear that we were coming to visit ourselves.”

  Most critical for his navigation, especially after flying several thousand miles at night, was the challenge of “finding the earth,” as Coli called it: determining their exact position. This problem would be simplified by a landfall near Belle Isle, Newfoundland, which was more than 1,000 miles from New York. If any course corrections were necessary, there would be sufficient time to do so, while in contrast, anyone flying to Paris from New York would only have 500 miles after Ireland to make course corrections. A landing in Paris would also be at night, a considerable challenge on a strange field after flying for forty-odd hours.

  The reciprocal argument was also very true. The Frenchmen only had a 500-mile outbound leg to ensure an exact course before departing the Irish coast. But Coli had picked prominent landmarks across the British Isles to guarantee a solid northwesterly heading. Twelve miles off the Devon coast in the Bristol Channel, Lundy Island was just such an ideal navigation point. Having long been a pirate haven, the reputation of the rugged little speck may have appealed to the pair of renegade Frenchmen.

  Shortly after 10 A.M. the White Bird crossed St. George’s Channel and struck the Irish coast at Dungarvan. Taking his bearings from the Cunnigar, a long finger of land sticking into the bay, Coli corrected their course, and they passed just south of the town. Sunday mass was under way so many people caught sight of the white aircraft, including J. Dunphy, a retired Royal Navy officer, who clearly saw French markings through his field glasses.

  For the aviators all was well; deep vales trapped the low mist, but the sky was perfectly blue a few hundred feet up. Waterford, Tipperary, and Limerick counties rolled by, their lyrical Irish names strange to French ears. Countless gray rocks speckled the emerald meadows as Ireland, soft and green in the morning light, concealed the threat that lay ahead. L’Oiseau Blanc was positively spotted over Sugar Loaf mountain, Cappoquin, and Glin as it flew steadily on, always northwest.

  Just before 11 A.M. it was sighted a bare fifteen miles from the Atlantic coast over Kilrush, near the Shannon River. As the plane passed over Scattery Island both pilots could see the vast blue shimmer of the open ocean. Off Nungesser’s left wing the stark, hard cliffs of Loop Head peninsula jutted forward into the cold Atlantic; enormous waves slammed against the granite rocks, throwing spray hundreds of feet into the air. A white lighthouse perched near land’s end, like the nail on a green finger pointing the way west.

  At 11 A.M. an eight-year-old boy named H. G. Glynn was climbing Knocknagaroon Hill, near Carrigaholt on the west Irish coast. Hearing a strange sound he looked up, shading his eyes against the glare. The boy watched, transfixed, as a large white biplane se
renely crossed the shoreline, chasing the sun to the west out over the Atlantic.

  It was never seen again.

  PART ONE

  Now, I’m giving up both land and day. Now, I’m heading eastward across two oceans, one of night and one of water.

  —CHARLES LINDBERGH

  ONE

  THE FIRST HOURS

  Roosevelt Field, Long Island

  May 20, 1927, 7:50 A.M.

  GLUE AND GASOLINE.

  The snug cockpit reeked, but the pilot ignored both smells. Slowly pushing the throttle forward he brought the roaring engine to its takeoff revolutions. The frame shook as the aircraft strained against the wheel chocks, desperate to pull man and machine through the wet, clutching clay. Leaning far left against the fabric-covered fuselage, Charles Lindbergh peered through the open window and down Roosevelt Field’s narrow runway. Not that there was much he could see on this drizzly Long Island morning. Shredded curtains of rain hung from low, heavy clouds and he could barely see the tree line at the field’s eastern edge.

  Despite being packed with cinders, the runway was soggy and the damp, sea-level air wasn’t giving as much power to the Wright Whirlwind J-5C motor as it should. The tachometer, which measures engine revolutions per minute, showed thirty revolutions low. That worried him, as did the slight tailwind. Lindbergh had planned a sunrise takeoff facing into the easterly nighttime wind, but he was late. Now the breeze was from the west, and he either had to have the aircraft moved to the other end of the runway or live with the problem.

  He could die from it, too.

  3610 miles to Paris. Following twelve days after the Frenchmen Nungesser and Coli’s doomed attempt at the Orteig Prize in L’Oiseau Blanc, Lindbergh’s flight was to be the first to try it nonstop and alone, and the first and only American attempt. Crowds had begun gathering at Roosevelt Field at midnight. Now a reported five hundred stood expectantly in the rain, “in the hope that they might see one of the great dramas of the air,” wrote the New York Times’s correspondent Russell Owen, who had made his name covering polar exploration. Like the conquest of the poles that a generation earlier had consumed the attention of the masses and made global celebrities of explorers like Peary, Shackleton, Mawson, Scott, and Amundsen, flying nonstop across the Atlantic had emerged as the signal quest of the time, emblematic of civilization’s expanding limits.