The Aviators

by Winston Groom

  Eventually Rickenbacker began to spend several days a week in New York tending to business. He was in his office on Sunday, December 7, 1941, when news came over the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor—just as Billy Mitchell had predicted. The news left him not only angered but also frustrated that a big war was now on and he was so infirm. His body wasn’t straight anymore, and he had a permanent limp in his left leg because of a severed nerve. In fact, he had to give up driving because he couldn’t use that leg to disengage the clutch of his automobile.

  There were a few things he could do, though, and first was to announce that the Indianapolis Speedway was closed for the duration. The nation could not afford to waste the fuel, metal, and tire rubber the race used up, Rickenbacker said, and the engineers, mechanics, and drivers would be needed in the military. Second, he began making arrangements for Eastern Air Lines to cooperate with the military in all ways possible.

  As winter came, Eddie and Adelaide retired to a houseboat in Florida, where he continued his rowing and exercising, hoping to get back into the best possible shape. Meantime, the war had become a perfect cascade of disasters. Germany had declared war on the United States right after Pearl Harbor and launched a relentless campaign of submarine warfare that threatened to destroy the U.S. Merchant Marine. The Japanese continued their rampage across the Pacific, occupying lands from Alaska to Southeast Asia and south through Indonesia to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Wake Island had fallen, the Philippines was near collapse, and Australia and India were threatened.

  For all of the horror and pain that it caused, the plane crash did have some positive effect on Eddie. Once more he felt that he was being tested, that he’d been allowed to live “for some good purpose … for some opportunity to serve.” In March 1942 he was still wondering what that might be when he received a phone call from Hap Arnold, who was now the commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces.

  Arnold asked if Rickenbacker could come to Washington for a private talk, something he could not say over the phone. The following Monday, in Arnold’s office, he disclosed to Eddie that his staff was receiving reports that the morale of air force groups being trained for combat was abysmal. “They’re indifferent. They haven’t got the punch to do the job they’re being prepared for,” Arnold said. He asked Eddie if he could go on a tour, immediately, and “put some fire in them, and while you’re there, look around and see what our problems are.”

  Rickenbacker said he’d be honored, but that he needed ten days to clear his desk, that his boys were coming home for Easter and he’d be ready afterward. Arnold told him the problem was too large to wait. Some of these troops would be on their way overseas by then and they needed a Rickenbacker talking-to now. “It is that serious,” Arnold said.

  “I’ll go right away, General,” Eddie told him.

  To give him some gravitas, Arnold offered to make him a two-star general, but Rickenbacker turned it down. He wanted to remain “Captain Eddie,” a civilian, unencumbered by military orders, and with the right to speak his mind. He left on March 10, 1942, for Tampa’s MacDill Field on a mission that once more would put him deep in the shadow of death.

  * Rickenbacker didn’t like the ring of “major” and was always “Captain Eddie” throughout his long career.

  † Four-wheel braking was not incorporated in the final design because engineers agreed it was a little “too innovative.”

  ‡ About $63 million today.

  § Milch walked a tightrope during the Hitler regime, since his father’s parents were Jewish, but he was a favorite of Göring, who had Milch’s mother produce a certificate saying that his father was not actually the sire of the child. “It is I,” Göring famously said, “who decides who is a Jew.”

  ‖ Crosby and his wife, the former Polly Peabody, scandalized Boston from the time of their marriage in 1922 until his death seven years later in a murder-suicide pact with another man’s wife in New York City.

  a Illegal even then, whispering campaigns, complete with paid rumormongers, were often used in the early twentieth century to help put competitors out of business.

  b Udet was an international-class seducer of women, whose conquests included Martha Dodd, the daughter of the American ambassador to Germany.

  c These Nazi “laws” stripped non-Germans—in particular Jews, blacks, and Gypsies, or Roma—of their civil rights and severely restricted their ability to live productive lives. It was the first step on the way to the Holocaust.

  d The U.S. government actually built more than 300,000 planes during the war.

  e This was the same vibrator beam, or a modified version of it, that had been developed by the Guggenheim Full Flight Laboratory in 1929, the year of Jimmy Doolittle’s historic flight.

  f Had he not done this, it is likely that everyone aboard would have been immolated in a fiery crash.

  CHAPTER 9

  AN INSPIRATION IN A

  GRUBBY WORLD

  LINDBERGH HAD PLANNED TO CHECK into a cheap hotel or pensione for the night when he landed in Paris, and then spend a week or so fooling around the aerodromes and flying fields, perhaps meeting some French pilots and engineers. Instead he became the object of the greatest celebration in France since the end of World War I, and which became possibly the greatest public outburst in the history of the world.

  The members of the press went berserk over the story. In anticipation of Lindbergh’s arrival, it was said that United Press International had arranged for exclusive use of all the public phones at Le Bourget, which nearly resulted in a mini-riot. The phone booth occupied by the chief UPI correspondent was overturned by his competitors with its door down, trapping him inside with all the phone wires ripped out. The night editor of the international edition of the Chicago Tribune had not believed that Lindbergh would make it and hence had left no news hole for the story. Thus, next day, a brilliant one-on-one interview with Lindbergh rated only a two-column head, when every other newspaper in the civilized world splashed his success in banner headlines—not to mention that the “interview” itself was a fake,* written by the paper’s Paris correspondent ahead of time to beat the crowd.1

  Lindbergh was just as astonished as anyone else at the animating effect his successful landing had on the rest of the world. “To me,” he said, “it was like a match lighting a bonfire.” When the Paris telegraph flashed out the news of Lindbergh’s achievement it reached New York radio stations at about five p.m., and the city spontaneously erupted into delirious celebration: all the boats in the harbor, including the ocean liners, began blowing their horns. This in turn set off the fire trucks from Harlem to the Battery, which responded with their own horns and sirens; police cars from Brooklyn to Staten Island chimed in; people in the streets yelled and shook their fists in the air, while those in the high-rise buildings began shredding papers and phone books and throwing the stuff out the window like confetti. On Broadway, performances were interrupted with the news, and theater orchestras arose in their pits and played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “La Marseillaise.” Scenes such as these were repeated in cities and towns all over America as the radio, telegraph, and telephone broadcast the news.2

  People scrambled to name babies, streets, schools, parks, landmarks, and so forth, after the new hero. The New York Times headline LINDBERGH DOES IT! covered the entire top of the fold. In the South and Midwest, farmers rang their dinner gongs and churches set their steeple bells clanging. There was a similar outpouring worldwide. From Stockholm to Singapore, from Tokyo to Tegucigalpa, people were seized with the notion that an entirely new horizon had been discovered—as if all men were now bound much closer to one another in a more harmonious, immutable way. Only from the surly bonds of the Soviet Union was there no uproarious celebration or hearty applause; instead, from the Kremlin came a wary silence.

  When he arose from sleep at the American embassy in Paris a little after noon, Lindbergh was treated to a warm bath drawn by a butler who left him fresh towel
s and a robe. Outside, no fewer than twenty-five movie cameras and fifty photographers had set up since early morning, waiting to capture the valiant young flier on film, while several hundred newspaper reporters were loitering in the embassy’s public rooms downstairs. Because Lindbergh had neglected to pack even so much as a business suit, the matter of clothing became urgent. Ambassador Herrick’s valet came to the rescue with a dark suit borrowed from a tall, slender acquaintance, which would have to do while a bevy of Paris tailors arrived to measure Lindbergh for everything from slacks to a top hat and tails. Herrick recognized a good thing when he saw it, for the arrival of Charles Lindbergh was the best thing that had happened to his ambassadorship and he intended to capitalize on it for all it was worth. He cabled Washington: “If we had deliberately sought a type to represent the youth, the intrepid adventure of America … we could not have fared as well as in this boy of divine genius and simple courage.” As one writer observed somewhat snidely, Herrick was delighted that he “had on his hands not a gauche hick from the Middle West backwoods, but a young man who seemed to be normal and comfortable in every situation.”3

  Indeed he was. Lindbergh had his idiosyncrasies, as we shall see, but on the face of it he was highly intelligent, especially about aviation, had a sunny disposition, a naturally smiling countenance, and a lyrical demeanor, and being a captain in the army had taught him always to defer to his elders and betters as “sir.”

  In the borrowed suit he spoke from the balcony of the embassy to the assembled mob of journalists, movie and camera crews, and Parisians who were chanting “Vive Lindbergh!” in the courtyard below. In reply Lindbergh used the only French phrase he knew, which was “Vive la France!,” and waved a French flag, thus entering the great corpus of historical photography while the flash pans hissed and sparkled and the movie cameramen cranked on. At the suggestion of Ambassador Herrick, he mentioned that Benjamin Franklin, when he had been the American envoy to France, had shown great interest in French aerial balloons. Like Rickenbacker before him, Lindbergh was beginning to realize that what he had done was bigger than him, or anything he had ever conceived it might be, and wrote later that he found himself “surrounded by unforeseen opportunities, responsibilities and problems.”

  Back inside the embassy he spoke with his mother on a transatlantic radiophone linkup, and he was introduced to the first of the enormous amount of personal mail and tributes that would inundate the embassy in the coming days. The first thing he was shown was a congratulatory telegram from President Calvin Coolidge, and next a huge floral spray, about which Lindbergh laughingly remarked from the height of his own experience with aviation that “I am glad to be able to receive it personally,” since “a lot of times flowers come the wrong way, and you aren’t able to appreciate them.” It was his first public joke and everyone broke out in cheers.

  There was much pulling and tugging at Lindbergh’s sleeves but to his credit the first thing he insisted on doing was pay a visit to Charles Nungesser’s mother. In an apartment up six flights of stairs, Mrs. Nungesser was waiting for Lindbergh at the door, and a teary embrace ensued, while Lindbergh told her not to give up hope.† The afternoon was spent in press conferences, including a session with the New York Times, with which the St. Louis syndicate had arranged to have an exclusive interview.

  Next day, after inspecting the Spirit of St. Louis and finding everything in reasonably good order, Lindbergh was driven to the Élysée Palace, where the president of France pinned the French Legion of Honor cross on his lapel, the first ever such distinction for an American civilian. Riding past throngs of cheering Parisians, he went to a luncheon at the Aéro-Club and was bestowed its gold medal, as well as his first glass of champagne, which he could hardly turn down after a lengthy toast was offered on his behalf and a waiter in livery served the sparkling glass conspicuously up to him on a silver platter. This showed a rare flexibility in Lindbergh’s character, because he almost religiously shunned alcohol. In this case he was canny enough to realize it was diplomatically important to observe the customs of the French rather than adhere to his principles. There were times in the future, to the regret of many, when he would not prove so adaptable.

  Lindbergh turned down a gift of 150,000 francs that the Aéro-Club had offered him, instead (once more) diplomatically asking that it be given to help the families of French fliers who had died “for the progress of aviation” (doubtless with the mother of the missing Charles Nungesser in mind). Then he was taken to the window, where thousands of people in the streets cheered the sight of him, and, to the delight of Ambassador Herrick, he gave a short speech praising the attempt by Nungesser and Coli to fly the Atlantic.

  That night, Lindbergh was astonished and angered to find that the Times reporter he’d been talking to had used Lindbergh’s information to create a first-person account of the transatlantic flight that ran all over the front page of the New York Times—under Lindbergh’s byline! He considered it a violation of trust, as well as blatantly dishonest, because the reporter had put words in his mouth in an ingratiating, hayseed style. The incident had a lasting effect on Lindbergh; he concluded that the press “had an agenda all its own” and would exploit him for their own ends. They were not to be trusted—even those publications with the stature of the New York Times.4

  The celebrations, ceremonies, luncheons, dinners, and interviews went on until Lindbergh was exhausted. Americans wanted him home and President Coolidge had sent the U.S. Navy battlecruiser Memphis to fetch him at Cherbourg. The Belgians wanted a piece of him also, as did the English. On May 29, a week after he’d landed in Paris, Lindbergh took off from Le Bourget. A million Parisians gathered in the streets to watch his departure. He did not disappoint, performing a breathtaking repertoire of stunts: loops, rolls, Immelmanns, dives, and spins from his barnstorming days, and dropping a French flag with a note attached—“Goodbye! Dear Paris! Ten Thousand Thanks for Your Kindness to Me!”—before proceeding north toward Belgian Flanders.5

  Some of the hardest fighting of the war had taken place there, and many of the scars remained: shell-hole-pitted fields, jagged remains of trench lines, demolished towns and villages, and entire forests blown completely to splinters. When he landed near Brussels, Lindbergh and his plane were not mobbed as in Paris: King Albert had thoughtfully ordered five thousand Belgian soldiers with fixed bayonets to guard the field when the Spirit of St. Louis came down.

  Lindbergh was feted by Albert and made a Knight of the Order of Leopold. He spent the night and next day was received by cheering tens of thousands as he was paraded through the capital city. That afternoon he flew away, but not before dropping a wreath of flowers over the American cemetery near Ghent. When he reached the Channel he headed for Croydon Field, a dozen miles south of London, with perfect flying weather in the merry month of May.

  If Lindbergh had believed that the usually sedate British would, like the Belgians, give him a hearty but formal welcome, he was sorely mistaken. An estimated hundred and fifty thousand people crashed through ropes and barricades and ignored the frustrated whistles of hundreds of bobbies. They so mobbed the flying field that Lindbergh was compelled to do a touch-and-go landing when he feared he might plow into the crowd. When at last the field was cleared and he put down for good, police and other officials arrived in cars to spirit him away, but not far. He was taken to the control tower where he climbed to the top and addressed the surging masses. “I just want to tell you this is worse than I had in Paris!” he said delightedly and to great cheering.6

  When he reached the American embassy in London Lindbergh was informed that the king wanted to see him, and on the morning of May 31 he was driven to Buckingham Palace and presented to King George V. The U.S. ambassador was away and the chargé d’affaires was a “boiled shirt who was in rather a state because I was in an ordinary business suit and not a frock coat!” Lindbergh said. As it turned out, it was just the two of them, Lindbergh and the king, who, Lindbergh said, showed a remarkable knowled
ge of aviation. Right off, the king leaned forward and said, “Now tell me, Captain Lindbergh, there is one thing I long to know. How did you pee?”7

  Lindbergh addressed this startling inquiry by explaining that he carried with him “a sort of aluminum container,” which he said he threw out of the plane in France before landing at Le Bourget.8 The king seemed satisfied with this explanation and they moved on to other topics. Soon Queen Mary swept into the room and watched as the king pinned a medal on Lindbergh, the Air Force Cross, “for great flying achievement.” Before he left, Lindbergh was taken into a room and introduced to the king’s granddaughter the baby Princess Elizabeth, who had just turned one year old.

  What followed were the now customary rounds of celebrations, ceremonies, and presentations, and the adulation reached dizzying heights. Lindbergh was taken to Parliament by Lord and Lady Astor, where the entire House of Commons recognized his exit by rising to their feet in a standing affirmation believed to be the only such demonstration ever extended to an American. Afterward, on the terrace, he met Winston Churchill, then chancellor of the exchequer, who later told the Parliament, “From the little we have seen of him, we have derived the impression that he represents all that a man should say, all that a man should do, and all that a man should be.”9

  EVERY DAY NEWSPAPERS WERE QUOTING this person or that on what Lindbergh should do with the rest of his life. Some said he ought to start a flying school, others that he ought to be appointed to some high official position in government, and others still with the predictable suggestion that he should become a movie star. Much of the to-do was similar to what Eddie Rickenbacker had endured when he came home a hero from World War I. Huge financial offers were made if Lindbergh would endorse everything from cigarettes to shaving cream to hats and gloves. During the first months it was estimated that these offers totaled at least $6 million.10