The Flight

by Dan Hampton

  Raymond Orteig had become fascinated with aviation during the Great War when many pilots frequented his Lafayette Hotel in New York. He heard a 1919 speech by Eddie Rickenbacker at the Aero Club of America, where the U.S. flying ace spoke of a day when France and America would be connected by air. Inspired, Orteig initiated the prize that would bear his name, writing in a letter to Alan Ramsay Hawley, president of the Aero Club,

  Gentlemen: As a stimulus to the courageous aviators, I desire to offer, through the auspices and regulations of the Aero Club of America, a prize of $25,000 to the first aviator of any Allied Country crossing the Atlantic in one flight, from Paris to New York or New York to Paris, all other details in your care.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Raymond Orteig

  May 22, 1919

  The challenge was initially intended to run for five years but when 1924 arrived with the money still unclaimed, it was renewed for another five-year period. By now the contest was open to aviators from all nations, and the rules had been carefully codified. The aircraft could be either a seaplane or land plane, but it had to take off and land within fifty miles of either city. The gasoline tanks had to be sealed and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale required that a barograph record the flight.* Carl Schory of the National Aeronautic Association personally installed the 1924 PN-7 barograph into the Spirit of St. Louis while it was hangared at Curtiss Field.

  Orteig was inspired to promote aviation, and that was the real reason Lindbergh was risking his life on this flight to prove aviation’s worth. Despite the technological advances there were still many who regarded manned flight as a fad. The transatlantic air crossing was the most dramatic possible display of aviation’s promise to connect the world as no technology had before, to prove that planes could be for the twentieth century what railroads had been for the nineteenth. Lindbergh’s backers in St. Louis were caught up in the spirit of the event, and when Slim pointed out that the requisite sixty days hadn’t elapsed between filing and the actual flight, his foremost investor, banker Harry Knight, had replied, “To hell with the money. When you’re ready to take off, go ahead.”

  And here he was.

  FORTY MINUTES AFTER takeoff Long Island Sound was glassy and smooth: gray water under gray skies. Forcing his shoulders back to relax, Lindbergh knew fatigue would be one of his worst enemies, and he’d have to do what he could to alleviate it. Checking the heading again, he squinted at the earth inductor compass and wondered, not for the first time, just how accurate the new instrument was. Brice Goldsborough of the Pioneer Instrument Company had installed it himself shortly after the Spirit arrived at Curtiss Field. There was obviously a magnetic compass for backup but it was mounted over his head and he could only read it backward from a mirror on top of the instrument panel. Magnetic compasses were notoriously fickle, difficult to use, and often unreliable.

  Holding his northeast heading of 065 degrees, Lindbergh glanced at the New York State railroad map spread across his knee. It seemed he left Long Island a bit southeast of the planned route, but he’d be better able to check the course on the other side of the sound. He ought to cross the Connecticut shoreline over Clinton Bay; with Cedar Island running through the middle, it should be an unmistakable landmark. He’d then continue northeast to hit the 100-mile mark on the Thames River north of New London, Connecticut.

  A pilot could only plan so far in a theoretical, flat-world sense, so fixing this first 100-mile position was a critical assessment of his navigation. Headings, courses, times—these were all necessary, and they had to be accurately plotted, but he’d been flying for five years now, long enough to know they rarely matched reality. Nevertheless, Lindbergh was certain that if he was to survive the night, if he was to have the slightest chance of eventually making landfall in Ireland, then he must stay as close as possible to the black line calculated in California weeks ago. This was easier said than done, since the route on the map was a “course,” a planned direction of travel. A course was always expressed in degrees, with three digits, beginning at north and working clockwise around the compass. Plotted on the map his course was 066 degrees but his “heading”—where the aircraft physically pointed—was 065 degrees. Usually the difference was due to winds, though at this stage he simply elected to use Dead Reckoning: to fly from landmark to landmark while he could.

  While flying along the eastern states he would use his four railroad maps, and these were indispensable as long as the ground was visible. Even when it wasn’t, a pilot could get fairly close by maintaining his course and keeping track of the time: so many minutes along a plotted line that could then be compared to the map. Geographical features, and very often water towers or city signs, were also used whenever in doubt. Headings and courses rarely coincided due to instrument or pilot errors, which was why cross-checking with landmarks was so vital.

  Still, dead reckoning was really the only practical way to fly over land in 1927. Very shortly, however, the Spirit would leave the American coast for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, where maps were not to be trusted. Beyond that, east of the Avalon Peninsula, lay the open ocean and no references at all. In his case, he’d have to be absolutely certain of his last position on the Newfoundland coast as there would be no updates over the Atlantic. The only way to cross an ocean with any accuracy was as ships did it with a course corrected against the earth’s magnetic field, and timing. He’d have to account for winds, and keep the Spirit on a compass heading that would get them to Ireland.

  The difficulty with any type of map is that it’s a flat representation of a sphere, and one cannot travel in a truly straight line over something rounded, such as the earth. There will always be some distortion, like peeling an orange and trying to flatten the pieces. Thus a course plotted between New York and Paris would appear as a straight line, but in reality it was not. It was a slice through the globe, called a great circle, which cut through all lines of longitude, or meridians, at the same angle. To hold that same angle over a curve, periodic course changes had to be made and Lindbergh decided to do so at hundred-mile increments. As he planned to maintain a 100-mph air speed, this made the calculations relatively simple. The two biggest challenges would be staying awake and accurately correcting for the effects of weather and wind. Why, the Spirit was already several miles south of the planned route and he wasn’t even thirty miles from Roosevelt Field.

  Slim leaned back, gazed around the cockpit, and again tried to relax. It’s a compact place to live, he thought of Spirit’s interior. I can press both sides of the fuselage with partly outstretched elbows. The wicker seat was curved along the back so hunching forward a bit was natural. That also helped with his headroom and, in fact, a rib in the fuselage had been modified so he could sit upright, more or less. As it was, his head brushed against the celluloid skylight installed above him, but when he looked up Lindbergh could see the stars and add another verification for his nighttime navigation.

  The control stick was little more than a bare rod. Beyond a slight bulge at the top there was nothing else on the plain wooden cap to keep his fingers from slipping. A grip . . . why not a knurled grip of some sort with a small ledge on which to rest his right hand during the long hours ahead? Most everything else that needed manipulation was on his left: throttle and mixture controls, each with simple wood knobs, and a sliding lever that extended or retracted the periscope. Albert Clyde Randolph, a Ryan employee, came up with the idea and made it work. The forward visibility through the simple mirrors wasn’t much, but he could see hills or telephone wires ahead. It was enough.

  The inside of the cockpit was completely exposed, with no weight wasted for paneling or unnecessary finishes. Each ounce saved was an extra ounce of fuel carried, a few more precious moments in the air that could mean the difference between success and failure. Lindbergh knew Commander Dick Byrd’s huge America had three 220-horsepower Wright engines and could lift a four-man crew with nearly the same poundage in fuel as the Spirit weighed altogether.
Though Nungesser’s L’Oiseau Blanc was a single-engine aircraft, its motor was an immense, twelve-cylinder Lorraine-Dietrich that could generate 450 horsepower. René Fonck’s enormous, three-engined Sikorsky S-35 boasted red leather seats, extra clothes, a bed, and duck à l’orange to celebrate their arrival in Paris.*

  Lindbergh couldn’t afford the weight.

  He had a few sandwiches in a brown paper bag that Dick Blythe, a Wright Corporation public relations man, bought for him on the way back to Roosevelt Field the night before.† Frank Tichenor, who edited the Aero Digest, had asked, “Are you only taking five sandwiches?”

  “Yes,” Slim had replied. “That’s enough. If I get to Paris I won’t need any more, and if I don’t get to Paris I won’t need any more, either.”

  Flying the mail, he’d remained awake longer than the thirty-odd hours this flight would require. He didn’t eat much anyway, as his slight frame evidenced. Fuel and navigation mattered more.

  Switching hands on the stick, he folds up the Rand McNally map of New York and shoves it into the chart bag by his left leg. It also contains a pair of dark green sunglasses, a first-aid kit, and smelling salts, but he just extracts the next map: Connecticut.

  Shifting left again, he squints ahead into the haze. As shore approaches, the gray is darkening to blue, then to green as the misty haze becomes the New England coastline. One of the pitfalls with dead reckoning is the tendency of a pilot to make what he observes outside match what he hopes to see on paper. By holding the 065-degree heading, and leaving Long Island somewhat south of his route, Slim figures he’s closer to the Connecticut River than to the planned point at Cedar Island. If that’s true, then he should see a nearly perfect corner of land off the nose: the right angle of Old Saybrook sticking into the water. Follow it north to the yawning mouth of the river, maybe a mile wide, emptying into the sound.

  The Spirit pitches a bit again as the air changes, but Lindbergh is less bothered than before. Passing along Harvey Beach he notes the time, 8:42, and decides to hold this heading. As long as he can see the ground he can get a good fix on Spirit’s position. But the engine could be “leaned” out a bit, he thinks, running an eye over the gauges. By manually adjusting how much fuel and air is mixed together he can directly control the motor’s performance. A richer mix of fuel to air is necessary for higher throttle settings, such as on takeoff or climbing to higher altitudes. A leaner mix contains less fuel so the engine operates more efficiently in cruise flight. Under stable conditions with the throttle set, less gas is burned, so there is less waste, and the motor is cleaner. This is important with a combustion engine that depends on spark plugs and valves for smooth, consistent operation. Less fuel also means higher engine temperatures that must be monitored closely, and of course if the mixture is too lean the motor will quit.

  Slim wants to lean the mixture until the tachometer needle fluctuates, or the motor begins to lose power. More art than science, this operation is affected by many variables: the type of motor, its maintenance, and the aircraft’s parameters. There is less pressure at higher altitudes so the air molecules spread out, making the air less dense. Leaning out air that is already thin quickly becomes problematic so the mixture is kept richer. At 150 feet, where he is now, air pressure is greater so the molecules are more closely packed. Temperature makes a difference as hotter air will also force the molecules apart somewhat. Holding the engine at 1,750 revolutions per minute, he eases the mixture knob down another inch until he can hear the difference. The motor is less throaty, and the roaring decreases. When the tachometer fluctuates, he nudges the mixture lever back up a hair until it is steady again.

  Ten minutes later, approaching the Thames River valley and rising hills, he climbs gradually to 600 feet. Leveling off, throttling back, and leaning out, Lindbergh holds the airspeed as New London, Connecticut, passes under the right wingtip. Norwich is somewhere upriver to his left, but he can’t see it and it doesn’t matter anyway. Noting the instrument readings in the log he then switches to the fifth fuel tank and is pleased. A successful takeoff, the first one hundred miles behind him, and everything is working as planned. Nudging the stick left, he angles north five degrees knowing that now is the time to correct toward his great-circle course. If he can get on course the Spirit will cross the Blackstone River just north of Providence, Rhode Island.

  Pulling out his third railroad map, Slim stares from the window at New England, struck again by the closeness of these eastern states. Morrison County, Minnesota, where he grew up, was bigger than the entire state of Rhode Island.* The land here is so green, the rolling hills heavy with trees, and what fields he can see are small, irregularly shaped, and filled with cattle or crops. Towns, railroads, and roads clutter the map, and he gives up trying to sort them out. The big landmarks are unmistakable and they’re enough. So at five past nine, with Narragansett Bay spreading out off the nose, he finds his exact position. Providence is to the left, and as several bay islands pass to his right Slim figures he’s about six miles from Massachusetts. Less than a half hour to the ocean.

  Lindbergh is also ten miles off course to the south, but that’s not a worry right now as there are ample opportunities ahead for corrections. The sky is clearing just as James “Doc” Kimball from the U.S. Weather Bureau had said it would, and Slim was confident he’d get a good position fix prior to departing the Massachusetts coast. Tilting his head back, he looks up through the skylight and feels a surge of optimism. The lead-colored overcast is thinning in places so the sun’s dazzling light begins burning through. Fall River, Taunton, Middleborough, and scores of other towns all slide south beneath the Spirit’s wings. Ahead the pilot sees the sky split: lighter gray above with the darker Kingston Bay shoreline below. North and south of the town, about a half mile offshore, a pair of beaches reach inward to form a natural breakwater. A narrow gap allows ship traffic, and through his right window he can see a squat, rust-colored lighthouse. Shaped like a spark plug, it’s perched near shoals at the center of the channel.*

  Looking back as the coastline disappears under the tail, Lindbergh folds up his last Rand McNally map and stows it. With the immense, curving fishhook of Cape Cod Bay off his right wing, he tugs out the chart he’ll use for the rest of the flight. Called a Mercator projection, it essentially unrolls, or projects, the three-dimensional earth onto a two-dimensional surface. The orange peel again, but this time stitched together. Because of this, the longitude and latitude lines appear straight, at right angles to each other, and though unrealistic it allows huge distances to be plotted on a single chart. If periodic corrections are made that account for the earth’s shape then the Mercator gives accurate compass bearings between two points. For this reason it’s the best tool available for the Spirit’s journey.

  His second 100-mile point was just ahead, between the dark smudge of Boston to his left, and Race Point on the right. The great Cape Cod fishhook ends here, at Provincetown, curling around 270 degrees to point back east. Lindbergh couldn’t see it, but he knew there was a stone tower in the harbor commemorating the Mayflower’s first anchorage.* The thought of those Pilgrims spending two months at sea in a hundred-foot ship had once seemed outrageous, yet now he was going to cross that same daunting ocean in a 27-foot, eight-inch-long aircraft.

  With the cape off his right wing, Slim nudges the stick and gently kicks the rudder, watching the compass wobble around until 071 degrees appears under the line. He’ll hold this heading for the next hundred miles, then check to the right again, adjusting for the earth’s curve. Still at 150 feet over the waves, Slim absorbs the sense of sheer space that would likely overwhelm a pilot unused to it. Years of flying over the vast American Midwest proved to be good practice for open-water flying. The Wright Whirlwind is steady at 1,760 revolutions and the other gauges read normal as he carefully switches to the nose fuel tank. His course is set, his chart is open and ready, and the Spirit is performing perfectly.

  As America fades away behind him, he stares down at
the Mercator projection; so many points on a map, so carefully calculated and plotted. They must have seemed almost arrogant now. Paris, still just a distant, impersonal black dot, is over 3,000 miles away. Thirty-five more heading changes over unknown spots. Well, unknown to him, but the marks between Long Island and Cape Cod had been strange a few hours ago, too. Now they’re real memories of actual places, just as those points ahead will be. As the world rotates beneath him the pilot takes comfort in knowing that each degree of turn, each foot and mile traveled, brings Paris closer. Slim is struck, not for the first time, by the power and magnificent potential of flight. What better way to demonstrate that the world can truly be opened to man than by safely flying between continents? Staring ahead toward the shimmering horizon Charles Lindbergh knows this is the real reason for accepting this challenge, and the terrible risk to his own life.

  TWO

  HOPE

  FEAR DIDN’T PLAY much into Lindbergh’s thinking, and independence, toughness, intelligence, and stubbornness were inherited traits. His paternal great-grandfather, Ola Mansson, personified these attributes that would surface throughout Charles’s life. Born in the village of Gardlosa, Sweden, on the southern tip of the Scandinavian peninsula, in 1808, Mansson grew up just miles inland from the Baltic coast. It was a region rich in Norse mythology, home to the legend of Beowulf and Viking excursions, and bred a particularly hardy, resilient population.

  Elected to the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament, in 1847, Mansson served on the Appropriations Committee and was appointed to the State Bank of Sweden. Outspoken and a bit self-righteous, he acquired enemies in proportion to his rising power; his ardent support for social reform didn’t help. He backed rights for Jews, the infirm, and for women, whose company Mansson enjoyed while in Stockholm away from his wife and growing family.