by Dan Hampton
HE HAD INDEED been warned.
The French, both proud and nationalistic, had been embarrassed by Nungesser and Coli’s failure to reach New York. A rumor, quite incorrect, was circulated that the U.S. Weather Bureau had withheld essential meteorological information from the French aviators in order to give Byrd, Chamberlin, and Lindbergh a better chance at success. Tensions between the United States and France had lingered since the Great War, and Washington was insisting that France’s portion of some $10 billion in outstanding loans be paid in full. Many Europeans felt the debt should be forgiven in return for the blood they had spilt, and as the loans were generally used to buy American goods it was unfair for the United States to profit twice. Roughly 1,700,000 French soldiers and civilians had perished fighting the Germans and it was not an uncommon perception that the United States had avoided entry into the war until most of the fighting was over. Adding to the bitterness was the fact that Europe’s economies were still battered while America was enjoying the Roaring Twenties.
Conversely, Americans believed that Europe’s issues were Europe’s issues, and intervention in a war that did not affect our national interests had been an act of supreme sacrifice. Britain and France in particular should be properly grateful for assistance in winning a war not of Washington’s making. Large numbers of tourists, most of whom spoke no French, took advantage of the strong dollar to travel in Europe and this did not help. It was not unusual for Americans to receive poor service at restaurants or cafés, and sometimes tourist buses were pelted with stones. Washington’s high tariffs on French imports, combined with American isolationism, angered many Frenchmen who believed they sacrificed lives to save the world from Imperial Germany, and were owed more aid than they were receiving. As with all such issues there was some truth in both points of view, but the situation in May 1927 was so bad that Ambassador Herrick cabled Washington advising against any American attempt at the transatlantic prize—Lindbergh’s included.
Reports to the contrary aside, the French had planned for Lindbergh’s arrival. A Franco-American welcome committee was formed to handle the arrangements, and the Élysée Palace sent Colonel Denain, military aide to the president of France, with full authority to act as he deemed fit. Commander Richard Byrd had also dispatched a representative to Paris weeks earlier to assist as needed. The French priority from the beginning had been the plane: escorting the Spirit of St. Louis to the main apron near the terminal, shutting it down, and safely securing it in a hangar. Lindbergh would then be taken to the welcome reception, then across to the military side of the airfield, where he would spend the night.
The American priorities were different. Ambassador Herrick, like nearly everyone else, knew nothing about Charles Lindbergh and had no idea how he would behave, or what he would say when faced with the press. Concerned with relations between the two countries, Herrick sought to isolate the young pilot until he could better judge the situation and the man. Above all, he wanted to keep Lindbergh away from the press unless Herrick himself was present.
Enlisting the aid of Commandant Pierre Weiss, commander of the 34th Bombardment Squadron, the ambassador’s plan was for the French officer to meet Slim at his plane and immediately whisk him away to the more secure military buildings. Weiss, who was himself a pilot of note, would have a mechanic inspect the plane, as well as have several French aviators nearby who spoke passable English. While this was happening Herrick had arranged for a Lindbergh double dressed in flying clothes, one Jean-Claude d’Ahetze, to make a token appearance and satisfy the crowd.
On the face of it this seemed a logical approach. The French had also augmented the civil police with two companies of soldiers, and the chief of the Paris police sent an extra five hundred men. But no one anticipated the wild response Spirit’s landing would generate, so maintaining order over 100,000 ecstatic Parisians and 12,000 vehicles was entirely problematic.
After the Spirit landed and turned back toward the lights, the small military group moved out to intercept it. Unfortunately the clustered reporters saw them and believed they were being scooped by other newsmen. Breaking into a run across the field, the reporters apparently set off the stampede that broke down the fences. Lindbergh, of course, knew none of this and only saw the faces at his window. The chances that a senior mechanic and two English-speaking French pilots randomly arrived at his plane are remote and this lends credibility to the story of Herrick’s plan.
Two fellow aviators finally rescued Lindbergh from the mob. Michel Détroyat was a French Air Force pilot, and George Delage flew commercial airliners between London and Paris for Air Union. “Come,” Delage had shouted. “They will smother him!” He yanked Lindbergh’s helmet and goggles off, tossing them to d’Ahetze, the stunt double, to wear, but somehow the gear ended up in the hands of a young, blond American named Harry Wheeler.* As the mob latched on to Wheeler, Delage threw his coat over Lindbergh’s shoulders and they managed to get into the Frenchman’s little Renault.
Driving away from the madness they made it to the safety of a quiet hangar on the military side of the field called the North Block. Slim’s hearing still hadn’t fully returned, and since he spoke no French progress was slow. The Frenchmen chuckled at the young pilot’s concern over the lack of a visa and his immigration questions, but then Lindbergh asked about Nungesser and Coli and they visibly saddened. No, there had been no news; the men were believed dead. Détroyat scurried off to find a higher-ranking officer who could take charge of the American, and returned with Commandant Weiss.† Weiss, who hadn’t known about the double, took one look at Lindbergh and said in French, “C’est impossible . . . Lindbergh has just been carried triumphantly to the official reception committee.”
Once they sorted out that it was, in fact, Charles Lindbergh sitting there before them, all four men piled into the Renault and drove to Commandant Weiss’s office. After dropping Lindbergh off with his self-appointed escorts, Weiss decided his superiors should be aware of Lindbergh’s location and he left for the welcome reception at the main administration pavilion, near Le Bourget’s entrance. Surely there would be someone there who could assume responsibility for the world’s newest celebrity. It was bedlam at the pavilion. Poor Wheeler had been carried upstairs and dumped before Ambassador Herrick, who also believed the man was the genuine Lindbergh.
“I’m not Lindbergh!” Wheeler had shouted over and over to the mob, police, and the soldiers. He then said it again to Ambassador Herrick, who came forward to greet him with a bouquet of red roses.
“Of course you are.” Who else could he be?
“I tell you, sir, I’m not Lindbergh. . . . My name is Harry Wheeler.” He held up the helmet and goggles. “Everyone got confused because of this.”
Herrick noticed the young man wasn’t wearing a flying suit and was, in fact, missing his coat, belt, tie, and one shoe. Angrily refusing the flowers, Wheeler waved the flying helmet around and said, “I think some French officers took him to the other side of the field while that crazy mob was nearly killing me.”
Fortunately Commandant Weiss arrived and managed to quietly inform the ambassador of Lindbergh’s true whereabouts. By the time Herrick, his son Parmely, and daughter-in-law Agnes arrived at Weiss’s office it was after midnight. Following introductions, Lindbergh was promptly invited to the ambassador’s private residence for the night, and he gratefully accepted on one condition: that he could first see with his own eyes that the Spirit of St. Louis was safe. No one was enthused to go back to that part of the airfield, and the Frenchmen assured him that the plane was under guard and hangared, but Slim insisted. In the end, all three French pilots took Lindbergh over to the big Air Union hangar so he could see for himself.
He was shocked by the plane’s condition. There were gaping holes torn in the fuselage fabric, though at least one of these was caused by the hurried removal of the barograph recorder needed to verify the nonstop flight. Three fairing strips had indeed been cracked, as Slim heard after landing, and a
grease reservoir was missing from a rocker arm housing in the engine. Most vexing of all, his logbook was gone; a loss “he would bitterly regret for the rest of his life.”
However, the hangar doors were locked and an armed guard posted so there was little else to be done at the moment. The damage was done. The men again piled inside Delage’s Renault, and motored off toward downtown Paris.
TAKING BACKSTREETS TO avoid traffic jams and crowds, they cut through St.-Denis and entered the Paris suburbs by way of St.-Ouen. Delage threaded his way through the dark streets near Sacre Coeur, passing between the 17th and 18th arrondissements, then heading south.
Popping out near the Place de l’Opéra, the French pilot turned right and proceeded down the brightly lit Boulevard Haussmann toward the 16th arrondissement, on the Seine’s west bank. Reaching the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, which Lindbergh had seen hours earlier from the air, they stopped and motioned for Slim to get out. They wanted to show him the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and for a few moments the men gazed quietly at the gleaming brass rectangle surrounding the eternal flame. After squeezing back into the little car, they drove counterclockwise around the big circle. Delage took a spoke to the south onto the wide, tree-lined Avenue d’Iéna, which was sedate and much quieter. Across the river, the yellow outline of the Eiffel Tower was plain to see against the dark sky and they passed the Place des États-Unis. It was a leafy rectangle with a magnificent statue of Lafayette and Washington shaking hands, and the newly dedicated Memorial to American Great War Volunteers.
It had been a long night.
Surviving such a long, dangerous flight was one thing, but then Slim had been mobbed, rescued, and driven through the maze of northern Paris by strangers. Add to it the lack of real communications with the adrenaline of the past thirty-six hours finally subsiding, and Charles Lindbergh was drained. With no clear idea of where he was and no way to ask, he must have felt a profound relief to finally arrive at the curb outside No. 2, Avenue d’Iéna. This was the Residence: Ambassador Herrick’s private accommodation in the Chaillot Quarter. Fortunately, when separated from Lindbergh at the Le Bourget, Herrick had telephoned ahead to his house staff so they were prepared and waiting. Both French pilots bid their new friend farewell, leaving him to a hot bath and a late meal of eggs with soup.
Back at the airfield the ambassador had been searching for Lindbergh with Le Bourget’s military commandant, Colonel Poli-Marchetti. Eventually arriving at the hangar containing the Spirit of St. Louis, even with the French officer he was unable to gain entrance. He later recounted: “A sentinel was inside, apparently with everything tightly bolted. The officer called to him and ordered him to open. He flatly refused. The officer then told him who he was, giving his name and rank and ordering him severely to come out. Still the soldier refused.”
Deciding to return to the Residence, the ambassador finally made it through the epic traffic jam and arrived home at 3 A.M. to find the young pilot wearing the ambassador’s pajamas. Newspapermen had also found Lindbergh’s location and were waiting outside. Herrick, always gracious and seeing an opportunity to further bolster America’s image, wished to bring them in. Lindbergh, however, politely declined. Though he had no love for reporters, Slim had given his word to the New York Times that they would get the exclusive interview, and he could not go back on his promise. Parmely Herrick eventually found a Times reporter, Carlyle MacDonald, who decided that sharing Lindbergh was the most diplomatic option.
MacDonald’s own story, attempting to portray the new hero in the best light, was largely sensationalistic and generally erroneous. Lindbergh did not ask for a glass of milk and a bath upon landing, or circle once over the field and land with no doubts that it was Le Bourget. He did not see the “lights of several ships, the night being bright and clear,” nor would he have stated, “Anyway, I paid no attention to economy of fuel during the voyage,” as MacDonald claimed. The reporter did get the blue and gold color of Slim’s guest room correct, though he got the location wrong; the whole episode took place at the ambassador’s residence, not the embassy.
It was not the first, nor would it be the last, example of literary license, or simply poor reporting where Lindbergh was concerned. As mentioned, he had a low opinion for most of the press, and for legitimate reasons. In a quest for “the” scoop, reporters invented all sorts of things that unfortunately have been transmitted down through history and are widely accepted as the truth. Hank Wales of the Chicago Tribune wrote that Slim “gulped down a swallow of brandy from a flask one of the French pilots offered, and it seemed to revive him.” This was nonsense, of course, because Lindbergh was a teetotaler.
Wales went on to invent an entire plane-side interview that never happened because of a bonus he would be paid for the “first” Lindbergh story. Slim also never tied a bicycle to the upper limbs of a tree and sat there dreaming of flight. Nor did he study bird’s wings, have a kitten as a mascot in the Spirit, or carry a chicken’s wishbone for good luck. There was no secret wife or multiple fiancées, and he absolutely never said that “entering my cockpit was like entering a death chamber.”
By Lindbergh’s own admission after writing “We” (1927), and The Spirit of St. Louis (1953), he didn’t dwell on aspects of his flight that he felt might hurt the image of aviation. Obviously this included the sheer physical difficulties and technical problems of navigation. “Also, believing in aviation’s future,” he wrote twenty-five years after landing in Paris, “I did not want to lay bare, through my own experience, its existing weaknesses. For reasons such as these, I left out of my story much of greatest interest.”
In the end, the interview lasted less than ten minutes; the ambassador intimated that the young pilot had had enough and the reporters left reluctantly. According to Berg, “Lindbergh shook Ambassador Herrick’s hand and said there was no need to awaken him in the morning, as he was sure to be up and ready at nine o’clock.” What is certain is that at 4:15 A.M. Paris time, sixty-three hours after his head had last touched a pillow, Charles Lindbergh finally got his wish.
He went to sleep.
MOST OF THE Western world did not rest that night, however, and before midnight the president of France sent the following cable from the Elysée Palace:
Paris, May 21, 1927.
His Excellency, Mr. Calvin Coolidge
President of the United States of America, Washington D.C.
On the morrow of the attempt of our aviators, whose misfortune was so keenly felt by the kindly hearts of your countrymen, Charles Lindbergh made true the dream of Nungesser and Coli, and by his audacious flight brought about the aerial union of the United States and France.
All Frenchmen unreservedly admire his courage and rejoice in his success. I congratulate you most heartily in the name of the Government of the Republic and of the whole country.
Across America, fire engines and police cars sounded sirens; boats in harbors everywhere blew their horns, and homemade confetti was tossed from windows. At 5:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, eight minutes after Lindbergh had landed in Paris, the New York Times received official confirmation and the excitement was too much for some to bear. In Aberdeen, Washington, sixty-year-old Richard Barrett “dropped dead on the street here this afternoon as he reached for a newspaper extra.” Newborn boys were impulsively named “Charles,” and the first of 55,000 telegrams began pouring into St. Louis from all over the country.
Newspapers went into overtime; 25,000 tons of newsprint produced 114,000 extra copies of the New York Evening World, 16,000 of the Washington Star, and at least 40,000 additional papers for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Nor was the excitement confined to Europe and America. President Coolidge received congratulatory wires from Tokyo and Moscow; Rodolfo Chiari, president of Panama, cabled that “Lindbergh’s flight will leave a luminous track in the history of your great country and of the whole world.”
This was certainly true in the United States.
And the country was in need of some good n
ews. By 1927 some of the glitz from the Roaring Twenties was wearing thin. Though consumer spending stood at record highs, wages were down in most agricultural and manufacturing sectors, presaging the crash that would soon follow. The vast majority of Americans were fed up with the Anti-Saloon League and being told what to drink or not drink. Street gangs, armed with Thompson submachine guns, roamed the streets of major cities, and with the rise of organized crime the homicide rate leapt 25 percent in seven years.
Suicides were even higher, with more than 16 deaths per 100,000 people, and the number of people committed to mental hospitals had nearly doubled from the turn of the century. Marriage rates were about the same, but the number of divorces had increased. Interestingly though, nearly 70 percent of divorces were granted to women.* Weary from political scandals like Teapot Dome, spectacles such as Billy Mitchell’s court-martial or the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, Americans everywhere were ready for a hero.
“For years the American people had been spiritually starved,” Frederick Lewis Allen wrote in Only Yesterday. “They had seen their early ideals and illusions and hopes one by one worn away by the corrosive influence of the events and ideas.”
And who better to restore faith in themselves than a modest, fresh-faced pilot who had just accomplished the greatest death-defying feat of his age? A young man who did not fly across the Atlantic for money or personal glory, but because the challenge was there to meet. In a matter of hours Charles Lindbergh single-handedly restored some measure of chivalry to a jaded nation and romance to a world unbalanced by intellectual cynicism, and the perceived shallowness of a new modern age. Americans were captivated, including a nineteen-year-old boy on his way to study architecture at Princeton. Jimmy Stewart would go on to become one of America’s most iconic actors, but he never forgot being inspired by Lindbergh’s flight.* “Lindbergh’s problem was staying awake,” Stewart later recalled. “Mine was staying asleep that Friday night while he was unreported over the Atlantic between Newfoundland and Ireland.”
