Lindbergh

by A. Scott Berg

  In an effort to spread his wings, Lindbergh suggested a relationship with Ford similar to those he had maintained in the past with Pan American and TWA. He wished to be struck from the payroll so that he might engage in “aviation developments elsewhere in the country.” While he would continue to devote much of his time to Ford—testing planes and representing the company at meetings across the country—he would allow himself to be reimbursed only for company-related expenses. He refused Ford’s offer to cover his rent while he was living in Detroit, and he came to accept Ford’s gift of the trailer only by justifying it in his mind as payment for the work he was doing at Willow Run.

  In the summer of 1942, before Lindbergh could find new outlets for his energy and expertise, he got dragged into the news. William Dudley Pelley, organizer of the Fascistic Silver Shirts storm troopers, went on trial in August for sedition; and the defense subpoenaed Lindbergh to testify. Lindbergh had no idea why, as he had never had any contact with Pelley or any member of his organization. He appeared at the courthouse on August 4, 1942, where a crowd of reporters and photographers met him at the door. He said nothing to them and almost as little under oath. The defense attorneys proved to have no good reason for having summoned him; and Lindbergh could testify little more than that “the majority of the people of this country were opposed to getting into war—that is, before we were attacked.” The government chose not even to cross-examine him, and Lindbergh was off the stand within twelve minutes.

  From those paying close attention to the trial, Lindbergh picked up public sympathy. Newspapers that had not supported his prewar positions rushed to his defense. The Roanoke Times, for example, editorialized: “The effort of Pelley’s counsel to drag Lindbergh into the proceedings was unfair to Lindbergh and does not seem to have helped their client in the least. We have taken the view all along that Lindbergh was a misguided and mistaken young man, but we have never had the slightest reason to doubt the patriotism or to feel that he would for one moment put any other country’s interests above that of his own country.” Even the crotchety Theodore Dreiser observed that Lindbergh was “a babe at politics & finance and gets his foot in something of a political or socio-economic trap every time he opens his mouth.” And yet, he added, “all this has nothing to do with my admiration for Lindbergh for what he is and has done. He offered his services to our Army, didn’t he? And I am not one to assume that they would have been disloyal services. Rather, I think he would have fought the enemy to the deathline—his own or its.” But alongside news of Germany bombing England and threatening Stalingrad, and first reports of the planned extermination of all Jews in Europe, the Pelley story never commanded great public attention, just enough for people to remember yet another headline linking Lindbergh to Fascists.

  Lindbergh remained a bogy to the nation at large and anathema to Jews, who would instinctively recoil at the mention of his name for generations to come. During the war, to cite but one example, the John P. Marquands were staying with the George S. Kaufmans at their country house in Bucks County. One morning Anne Lindbergh called, hoping to reach her longtime friend Adelaide Marquand. When the message was delivered a few hours later, Beatrice Kaufman said to her guest, “You may call her back if you wish, but you may not do so from this house.” Mrs. Marquand, who strongly supported both Lindberghs, asked her husband to drive her to the train station, which he did.

  In September 1942, President Roosevelt visited Willow Run. The company product line—from jeeps to planes—was put on display for his inspection. Lindbergh thought it best to absent himself from work that afternoon. Only days later, he set his sights on a new aspect of military aviation, which would allow him to combine his interests in aviation and medicine, taxing both his mind and body. On September 22, 1942, Lindbergh and a half-dozen colleagues from Ford flew to Rochester, Minnesota—in one of the company’s B-24 “clunkers,” which sprang a near-fatal gasoline leak along the way.

  Dr. Walter M. Boothby, a Harvard-educated pioneer in aviation medicine, welcomed them. He chaired the Aeromedical Unit for Research in Aviation Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, where Lindbergh hoped to advance the practice of high-altitude test flying. With new planes reaching altitudes over forty thousand feet, aviatic warfare encountered unexplored medical problems, particularly hypoxia—inadequte oxygenation of the blood. Lindbergh was eager to examine the altitude chamber the Mayo experimental laboratories had built.

  The large steel chamber had two compartments—one in which the tests were conducted, the other an air lock, which permitted entrance, exit, and observation without changing the pressure within the test chamber. Lindbergh sat right down and strapped on oxygen hoses and a mask that had microphones attached. A motor-driven vacuum pump changed the cabin pressure to simulate an altitude of forty thousand feet. The relatively small body of conflicting statistics as to the point at which “blood vapor pressure becomes dangerous and the effect of frequent and prolonged anoxia on brain tissue” made Lindbergh think that he could contribute to this increasingly important study.

  For the next ten days, he became a human guinea pig. The experiments in which he partook at the aeromedical laboratory required intense physical activity and mental acuity. Before entering the chamber he had to “desaturate” for half an hour—riding an exercise bicycle or walking on a treadmill while breathing pure oxygen through a rubber face mask—to wash the nitrogen out of his body and prevent the formation of nitrogen bubbles under decreased pressure. Inside the chamber, measuring temperature changes against alertness, he performed numerous tests, simulating parachute jumps from high altitudes. More than once he strained himself to unconsciousness. During his stay in Rochester, he attempted one especially dangerous test of a descent at a speed twice that of any prior attempts. He determined that the Army’s emergency-oxygen equipment was inadequate.

  Before Lindbergh’s tests, the prevailing opinion among flying personnel in 1942 was that “you could not train your senses to become aware of a hypoxic condition in time to take conscious action to overcome it.” Lindbergh challenged that supposition. Working with Dr. Boothby and his staff, he devised a system whereby the oxygen supply to his mask would be cut off without his knowledge, while another mask with a full supply of oxygen was laid at his side in the chamber. “It was my job to learn to detect hypoxia quickly enough to change the masks without assistance,” he would later write. “Several trials taught me to make the change with a number of the originally available seconds of consciousness still in reserve.” Lindbergh’s subsequent report would affect the future of high-altitude flying, as he recommended that the use of emergency bailout oxygen equipment in a low-pressure chamber become a part of the indoctrination program for all high-altitude aviators.

  Upon his return to Ford, Lindbergh put his study to practical use. He flew P-47s—the single-engine, low-wing “Thunderbolts”—Air Force fighters capable of reaching forty thousand feet at a speed of 430 m.p.h., with their Ford-built 2000 h.p. Pratt & Whitney engines. For weeks he tested the planes so that he could formulate emergency procedures. Then he ordered changes in the design of the plane’s hatch, and he instructed other test pilots as to how they might reach higher altitudes. As a result of Lindbergh’s study, Ford modified its oxygen equipment, thereby saving countless lives.

  On one of his flights, Lindbergh ran short of oxygen without warning—at thirty-six thousand feet. The gages indicated otherwise; but he sensed too late that something was happening “to clarity of air, to pulse of life, perception of eye.” He grew aware, he would later write, “of that vagueness of mind and emptiness of breath which warn a pilot of serious lack of oxygen.”

  As the dials in front of him faded and he began to black out, he shoved the stick forward, diving as quickly as possible. Senseless, except for a vague awareness of a shriek outside his cockpit, he fell twenty thousand feet before full consciousness returned and his thought process was restored with the increasing density of air. Shortly after landing, a mechanic informed Lindbergh
that the plane’s pressure gage was reading fifty pounds too high and that his oxygen tank had simply run empty at thirty-six thousand feet. “That had caused all my trouble—a quarter-inch error of a needle,” Lindbergh would note and never forget.

  Lindbergh’s interest in high-altitude flying brought him to East Hartford, to inspect United Aircraft’s new twenty-eight-cylinder engine. After his visit, Eugene Wilson, president of the company, wrote Lindbergh that “considerable water has gone under the bridge since we last talked with you,” and he wondered if Lindbergh might be “in a position to help us in the direction of research and development.” Lindbergh pounced upon the invitation, explaining that his only commitments to Ford were of a personal nature, once he finished a few more weeks of tests and modifications on the P-47s.

  As those Thunderbolts entered production—becoming the most effective bomber escort planes in the European Theater—Lindbergh steadily devoted more time to United’s development of the Navy Marine Corsair (Vought F4U), which would be used as both a carrier fighter and a land-based plane. Between December 1942 and July 1943, Lindbergh made eight trips to Hartford, where he taught pilots the fine points of flying the plane, with its unique, upturned-wing design. Trained as a fighter pilot and frustrated at not having seen action, Lindbergh participated in maneuvers and mock combat. Deak Lyman, formerly of The New York Times, then working as an executive for United Aircraft, recalled Lindbergh’s taking his plane up and engaging in a high-altitude gunnery contest against two of the Marines’ best pilots. Lyman said the forty-one-year-old civilian “outguessed, outflew, and out-shot” both his opponents, each practically half his age.

  Lyman visited Anne Lindbergh in Detroit during one of her husband’s trips to Connecticut; and she commented that Charles’s new work “had made a new man of him, made him boyish again and had done much to remove the sting of his relations with Washington just following the declaration.” His work at United had become so engrossing, he even gave up the diary he had scrupulously maintained for almost five years. “If it weren’t for his family,” Anne said, “I am sure he would never come to Detroit. He would like to devote every minute seven days a week to United.” Or even better …

  On January 5, 1944, Lindbergh conferred with Brigadier General Louis E. Wood of the Marines, in Washington, about the possibility of going to the South Pacific for a survey of Corsair operating bases in the combat zone. United was receiving conflicting reports regarding the relative value of single- versus twin-engine fighters; and Lindbergh wanted to gather facts that would assist in designing the next generation of such planes. He had a personal agenda as well: After two years being sidelined, he yearned to see action at the front. The General said he would take the matter up with his superiors; and the next day Lindbergh was told he could proceed.

  Until the arrangements were made, Lindbergh continued to test planes, mostly single-seater or two-place planes at military bases. The work was dangerous, as some of the planes were experimental and others were obsolete, many with untried or overworked parts. During four days in January at Eglin Field in Florida, Lindbergh flew eight different planes—including the Boeing B-29, which America was about to release into the skies. This superfortress—capable of flying 350 m.p.h., with a radius of over two thousand miles, and a maximum bomb-load of twenty thousand pounds—was the pride of the nearly one hundred thousand planes the United States would produce that year, a vast improvement in speed, range, and load over any of the 2,200 planes America had produced in 1939, when Lindbergh had first sounded his alarm.

  Largely because of the exponential growth of American aviation, and the resultant superiority in the air, the war turned in favor of the Allies. Germany was all but ejected from Russia and Africa; and the Allies had bombed the daylights out of the industrial Ruhr Valley and Hamburg and were beginning to raid Berlin. In the Pacific, Japan was retreating as well, losing control of the steppingstones to her borders—the Solomon Islands, Kwajalein Island, and the Gilberts. The Allies moved on to the Marshall Islands and then the Kurile Islands.

  Lindbergh spent the first days of April 1944 in New York City. He went to Brooks Brothers to buy his uniforms, which were required in combat areas. Traveling on “technician status,” former-Colonel Lindbergh would be required to wear a Naval officer’s uniform but without any insignia or rank. In the event of his capture, he would be a man without a country.

  On April 22, 1944, the Allies invaded Hollandia, New Guinea, catching the Japanese offguard and allowing eighty-four thousand Allied troops to establish themselves there. Two days later, just as that news made the American headlines, “tech rep” Lindbergh left from North Island, San Diego, on the first leg of his trip to that precise dot on the map.

  It would take two months for him to reach the north coast of New Guinea, as he stopped in Hawaii, Midway, Palmyra, Funafuti, Bougainville, and Green Island en route. Approaching the war zones, Lindbergh kept redefining the duties of his singular job. He flew on dawn patrols and joined rescue missions into the jungle and over the seas; wherever he went, he asked to go to the front lines. Upon learning that Lindbergh had actually fired his guns when he was over Japanese-held Rabaul, a Marine colonel dressed him down. “You have a right to observe combat as a technician, but not to fire guns,” he told the unranked civilian. “Of course,” another Marine officer chimed in, with a wink, “it would be all right for him to engage in target practice on the way home.” From then on, the military looked the other way whenever Lindbergh chose to assert himself as a soldier.

  “The more I see of the Marines the more I like them,” Lindbergh wrote in his journal. The obverse was just as true. Grumblings among the troops were heard whenever Lindbergh’s presence was detected, men questioning his loyalty if not his competence. But just as often he would encounter former members of America First; and he invariably left everybody impressed with his skill, fortitude, and modesty.

  On May twenty-ninth, Lindbergh dropped a five-hundred-pound high-explosive bomb on Kavieng, hitting a strip of buildings along the beach where anti-aircraft guns had been reported. “I don’t like this bombing and machine-gunning of unknown targets,” he had to admit to his diary. “You press a button and death flies down. One second the bomb is hanging harmlessly in your racks, completely under your control. The next it is hurtling down through the air, and nothing in your power can revoke what you have done. The cards are dealt. If there is life where that bomb will hit, you have taken it.” He flew more than a dozen combat missions with Marine squadrons against Japanese targets on New Ireland and New Britain. “The missions,” reported one Army Air Force Colonel, “consisted of strafing and dive bombing Japanese troops remaining at the once strong bases of Rabaul and Kavieng.” Although Lindbergh had yet to encounter enemy planes in the air, he had become an expert bombardier.

  Effective though the single-engine Corsairs had been, many were beginning to act up. And so, before returning Stateside, Lindbergh wanted combat experience with the twin-engine P-38s, which the Army Air Force was flying, so that he could compare them. An old friend, General Ennis White-head, waved him on to Hollandia, where P-38s were being flown.

  On the afternoon of June twenty-sixth, Lindbergh knocked on the shack door of Colonel Charles MacDonald, the commander of “Satan’s Angels,” the celebrated 475th Fighter Group of the Fifth Air Force. Entering the Colonel’s quarters, Lindbergh offered his name; but MacDonald, engrossed in a game of checkers, did not catch it. Lindbergh explained that he was interested in learning about combat operations with P-38s, and that General Donald Hutchinson, the Task Force Commander, had said MacDonald was the man to see. The Colonel and the Deputy Commander remained guarded in their conversation and focused on their game, while the tall intruder dressed in khakis just stood there. At last MacDonald asked, “What did you say your name was, and what phases of operations are you particularly interested in?”

  “Lindbergh,” he replied, “and I’m very much interested in comparing range, fire power and your airpl
ane’s general characteristics with those of single engine fighters.” His eyes still on the checkerboard, MacDonald realized that the only way the intruder could get his answers was by flying the plane; and the tall man was not wearing any kind of wings. After a few more moves, he asked, “Are you a pilot?”

  “Yes,” he said, which prompted MacDonald to take a closer look at the forty-two-year-old man with the receding hairline standing there. “Not Charles Lindbergh?”

  “That’s my name,” he replied. MacDonald forgot his checkerboard and began talking airplanes. The men quickly became friends; and Lindbergh, who had but eight hours of flying time in a P-38, was invited on a “four-plane anti-boredom flight” the next day to Jefman and Samate. Once Lindbergh left the shack, MacDonald’s deputy said, “My God! He shouldn’t go on a combat mission. When did he fly the Atlantic? … [He’s] too old for this kind of stuff.” MacDonald thought their visitor seemed fit; besides, commented Major Thomas B. McGuire, Jr., the Air Force’s second-leading ace, who would be flying on his wing, “I’d like to see how the old boy does.”