Читать книгу Crime of the Century - Gregory Ahlgren and - Страница 5

Colonel Charles Lindbergh's grandfather, Ole Mansson, was born in Sweden in 1810. Despite his peasant origin, through hard work he became a land owner and, as such, was able to get elected to the Swedish Parliament at age 39. However, he developed so many political enemies that at age 50 he was forced, with his second wife and their newborn son Charles Augustus, to immigrate to the United States.

Ole changed the last name of his family to Lindbergh and settled in Minnesota where he resumed farming. When in 1862 he lost his right arm in a milling accident he reportedly never complained but merely, after a two year recovery, redesigned his tools for use with one arm.

The family homesteaded, and depended heavily on the hunting of wild game for their nutrition. Charles Augustus Lindbergh became proficient with a rifle and often solely shouldered the responsibility of securing game. During one winter hunting trip he brought down several ducks over a neighbor's pond. The water was so cold that the hunting spaniel retrieved only two mallards before refusing to re enter the frigid pond. Lindbergh stripped off his coat and clothes and waded into the pond in the midst of the Minnesota winter to retrieve all the ducks.

Lindbergh eventually became a successful lawyer in Minnesota. He married and had two daughters, Eva and Lillian, before his first wife died of an intestinal tumor at age 31.

Three years later he married Evangeline Land, a school teacher from Detroit who was teaching in Little Falls. Her father was Dr. Charles Land, a dentist and inventor who held several patents.

Evangeline was shy and withdrawn and also 17 years younger than Lindbergh. On February 4, 1902 they had their only child, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.

The family settled on their farm on the west bank of the Mississippi near the town of Little Falls. In 1905 the farmhouse caught fire. A nursemaid rescued three year old Charles from a room in which he had been playing and carried him outside. Although she told him not to watch, he did anyway, hypnotically mesmerized as the family home disintegrated in flames before his eyes.

Disintegrating also was the marriage between Evangeline and Charles Augustus Lindbergh. Although they never divorced or even legally separated, thereafter they lived apart. When they did reside in the same house for appearances sake, they stayed in separate areas.

Appearances were important because in 1906 Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. was elected to the United States Congress, a position he held for ten years. Thereafter he spent most of his time in Washington while Evangeline divided her time between D.C., the Minnesota farm, and her family's home in Detroit. The young Lindbergh also shuttled between three locales. While in Washington his father would indulge him by taking him onto the floor of the Congress. Although he later referred to Washington with a mixture of distaste and curiosity, he was also impressed by its historic nature.

In the spring he would move to Detroit, spending time with his mother and Dr. Land. He was fascinated by his grandfather's inventions and later would often refer to the hours spent in this laboratory.

After the short stay in Detroit, he and his mother would move west by train where they would open up the family farm in Minnesota for the season. During this period of constant migration, Charles attended eleven different schools and did well in none of them. He developed no close friendships. His halfsisters were significantly older and were out and living on their own while he was still a boy. His only constant companion was his mother.

Evangeline Lindbergh possessed a very negative image among the townspeople. She was considered aloof, pretentious, and patronizing. She often rode horseback alone through the area and few would even speak to her. On one occasion when riding through town with Charles, Jr. shots were actually fired at Mrs. Lindbergh by townspeople. They were aimed to frighten, not harm. Her young son grabbed his .22 rifle and fired back at those he believed had done the shooting. Although he did not hit anyone, his return shots came much closer than the original ones had to Mrs. Lindbergh.

Incidents such as these prevented anyone from attempting to develop a friendship with Charles, Jr. For her part Evangeline did not encourage him to develop relationships with anyone but herself and would quickly express her disapproval if he began to do so with other children his own age. Yet her own relationship with him was cold and somewhat formal. She would shake hands with him when they parted and when she put him to bed.

Discouraged or prevented from peer friendships, Charles, Jr. became fixated on machines. His autobiographical writings are filled with accounts of how he learned to drive an automobile at age 11, and of his subsequent love affair with a motorcycle. Conspicuously absent are tales of personal friendships. Nor is there any evidence that as he entered adolescence he had any interest in females.

Charles, Jr. invariably played alone on the Minnesota farm. He demonstrated a natural proclivity at an early age to construct items from wood. A raft by the river and a garden shed were two projects of which he was most proud.

When his father was home from Washington they occasionally hunted or swam together in the Mississippi River. During one such excursion, while playing on the riverbank at a spot where the current was especially swift, young Charles fell in. In order to teach him to be tough the elder Lindbergh refused any help to his son, thereby forcing him to learn to swim in order to avoid being swept downstream.

When Charles was ten his father bought their first automobile. Although neither of his parents was mechanically inclined, by age 11 Charles was driving it regularly.

During the summer of 1915 Congressman Lindbergh took a six week leave of absence to undertake an expedition on the Mississippi. He was to write a report following his journey on the efficacy of the system of dams then in existence. He took his 13 year old son with him.

It was a long and arduous journey. Traveling in a small boat powered by an outboard motor, they camped out along the way with Indians and farmers while contending with relentless insects. Despite the conditions young Charles held up well. To spend so much time with his father was an unusual experience which he revelled in. For his part the father took the occasion to talk of the great trials ahead for the nation, of the possibility of war, and of his own political ambitions.

Those ambitions were soon to be dashed because in 1916, after having announced his intention to give up his congressional seat to run for the United States Senate, Charles Lindbergh, Sr. was defeated in the primary. In the next two years the elder Lindbergh increased his opposition to the war and set his eyes on the Minnesota governorship. It was an ugly campaign filled with virulent attacks against Lindbergh, particularly for his stance on the war and for what was perceived to have been antiCatholic sentiments expressed during the previous campaign. He lost the gubernatorial race, and this effectively marked the end of his political career.

During this period, Charles and his mother, along with her brother Charles Land of Detroit, decided to drive to California. In 1916 the roads which existed were hazardous and frequently subject to the whims of the weather. The trip, which was supposed to take two weeks, lasted forty days. Young Charles drove the entire distance himself in a recently purchased Saxon Six.

In California mother and son rented a cottage on Redondo Beach where Charles enrolled in High School. There he was little interested in school, made no new friends, and frequently was truant. He was arrested in California for driving while under age and without any headlights. When his mother appeared at the police station she let it be known that her husband was a Congressman, and when Charles appeared in Court with his mother, he was let go with a warning.

Evangeline received word that her mother was ill with cancer and they quickly returned to Detroit with Charles, underage or not, again driving the entire distance. Eventually Mrs. Land was brought back to the farm in Little Falls where her daughter looked after her until her death in 1919.

In the winter of 191617 Charles and his mother prepared to stay on the farm, a new experience for them. Charles reluctantly reenrolled in school but his heart was not in it. Instead he actively prepared the house for winter habitation by installing storm windows, a wood furnace, a new well and plumbing. His father gave him permission to stock the farm with livestock and he set about this task with relish. He bought cattle, hogs, sheep, chickens and geese. A seventy year old retired lumberjack, Daniel Thompson, lived in the tenants' house and helped with odd jobs.

As he entered his senior year in high school he worried about the final examinations he would have to take to graduate. For the first time the realization that his low grades and lack of academic interest would be detrimental, troubled him. Fortuitously, the high school principal announced that anyone who wanted to work on their farm in lieu of attending school would be given full academic credit. Because of the war effort, and lack of farm laborers, the government had encouraged such a program to maintain food production.

Charles leaped at the opportunity and launched himself full time into the farming effort. The alternative program provided him not only with a chance to work on the farm but also to leave school where he had considered the other students, even those his own age, as "kids." He became a good and dedicated farmer, working from the crack of dawn until late at night, often in subzero weather. He also slept in the cold, preferring a bed on the screened porch piled high with blankets with only his dog as company.

Several years later he would write, "Farm work enabled me to combine my love of earth and animals with my interest in machinery. Each day was an adventure: taming cattle fresh from the range, breaking pasture for more cropland, dynamiting stone islands out of older fields."3

But he also found himself thinking of the future. "If war continued, I would soon become of military age, and soon afterward I would probably be in the Army. If peace came first, I would be faced with problems of college and examinations far more difficult than those I had avoided by farming in the war emergency."4 Neither was a happy prospect.

On November 11, 1918, word came by telephone at a farm auction he was attending that the war was over. Lindbergh continued farming for a few more months until, at his mother's urging, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was to study engineering. Never happy about this arrangement, he did so only because his parents, and in particular his mother, desired it. He never graduated and except for a few occasions, never again lived on the family farm in Little Falls.

During the one year he did spend in college, he made few friends. His mother secured a teaching job in the Madison area and rented an apartment close to the University where Charles continued to live with her. His academic difficulties continued. Rather than studying, he was much more likely to be found riding around the area on his motorcycle.

He also began to exhibit a tendency towards reckless endeavors. He delighted in racing through the woods and hills surrounding Madison on his motorcycle. When the two other motorcycle owners who were attending the University would join him, he would taunt them if they could not keep up. If they had to push their bikes over difficult terrain, he would turn and drive his motorcycle around them in a circle, all the while challenging their abilities to ride a bike.

Once, when these same acquaintances were standing at the bottom of a steep hill near the home of the college president, they told Lindbergh it was impossible to drive down the hill on a motorcycle at top speed and make the sharp turn at the bottom. Taking this as a challenge, Lindbergh assured them that not only could he do it but he could do it without brakes. When it became readily apparent that Lindbergh was quite serious they attempted, to no avail, to dissuade him.

Lindbergh drove his motorcycle to the top of the hill, put it in gear and, to their horror, drove at top speed down the hill. Approaching the bottom it was evident that he was not slowing, and as he came into the curve they could see he was not using any brakes. Although he leaned into the curve, he crashed into a fence. Bruised and battered, he picked himself up and, to their great discomfort, tried it again, this time successfully.

This was not the only odd behavior he began to regularly display. During a visit back to the farm one afternoon he was wandering through the house with a Colt .45 strapped to his hip. People who knew Lindbergh were aware of his fascination with guns and he often envisioned himself a "fast draw" expert. He regularly practiced shooting during the time he was in college. While going from room to room he would leap through entrance ways, practicing his "quick draw." Something went wrong during one of these quick draws and he shot a hole through the door between the kitchen and the hallway. Fortunately, no one was standing on the other side. Lindbergh's only reaction was disappointment in finding that the hole was too high to have killed the imaginary enemy.

He had returned to the farm that day because he was contemplating how to tell his parents, particularly his mother, that he was going to drop out of college after little more than one year. Had he not decided to leave school the University might well have made the decision for him. Because of his poor grades he had been placed on academic probation and it was only a matter of time before he flunked out.

Other students at the University recall that Lindbergh considered himself above the rules of the college, rebellious towards authority, and generally contradictory in his dealings with others. One classmate recalled Lindbergh complained to him that, "They treat you here as though you were a baby. Presumably a man comes to college because he wants an education. Why, then, all this taking of rolls, daily assignments, checks on your personal life, and so on?"5

He had also begun to think of learning to fly. When he expressed this to his mother she did little herself to dissuade him, although she did write to his father to ask that he discourage Charles from becoming a pilot. The senior Lindbergh sent his son a letter in which he pointed out that insurance companies would not insure pilots, even in peace time, because they considered the profession to have no future.

Charles had written a letter to the Nebraska Aircraft Company in Lincoln which made Lincoln Standard planes. They had advertised that they would give instructions to all potential buyers and Lindbergh wrote to them and said that although he was not yet in the market for a plane he would pay for the instruction. The cost for flight instruction, they wrote back, would be $500.00.

He decided that this was the opportunity he had been waiting for and so informed his mother. She replied simply that, "If you really want to fly, that's what you should do." Looking at him without emotion she said, "You must go. You must lead your own life. I mustn't hold you back. Only I can't see the time when we'll be together again."6

On March 22, 1922, he said goodbye to his mother in Madison and set out on his motorcycle for Lincoln, Nebraska, arriving alone on April 1. His mother moved out of the apartment and back to Detroit where she secured another teaching job in the high school, and where she remained for the rest of her life. Students at the Detroit High School would later nickname her "Stone Face."

In 1922 aviation was in its infancy in this country, limited primarily to military use, and "barnstorming," the equivalent of airborne circus rides, offered by lone pilots flying between rural fields. In many ways European aviation was well ahead of American regular passenger routes had already been established between Amsterdam and London.

The planes "manufactured" by the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation were actually modified and rehabed surplus Army Aviation training biplanes. They were converted for civilian use and equipped with a watercooled V8 engine which turned out approximately 150 horsepower. The company was owned by Ray Page, and the only regular student enrolled for flight instruction in 1922 was Charles Lindbergh. The company was about to be sold by Page. Lindbergh did not know this at the time he turned over the remainder of the $500.00 he owed for the flight instruction and which Page had quickly demanded upon his arrival.

Several people ended up giving lessons to Lindbergh while he was at the aircraft company, although his chief instructor was supposed to be Ira Biffle, a retired Army Air Corps instructor. Biffle, however, had lost his nerve after the flying death of a close friend, and gave many excuses why he could not take Lindbergh up on the days and times he had scheduled.

While at the school Lindbergh did form a friendship with a sixteen year old named Bud Gurney which lasted for several years. Gurney would hang around the mechanics who worked at the company, doing odd jobs, and hope that he also would be taught to fly. It was Gurney who began calling Lindbergh "Slim," a nickname which, like "The Lone Eagle," followed him for the remainder of his years. Lindbergh also spent many hours with the mechanics, learning how to service the planes, attach propellers, and complete repair work to the fragile wings covered with fabric stretched tight with rope.

Lindbergh began to develop a meticulous attitude towards all aspects of his life. He noticed how the better pilots tested and checked each part of a plane before flight, how each detail was analyzed and every contingency planned for before actually taking to the air. Though soon to be called "Daredevil Lindbergh" for his barnstorming stunts, he left little to chance and nothing unplanned. He expected perfection from himself, and certainly from those around him.

After more than eight weeks at Ray Page's, Lindbergh had little more than six or eight hours instruction in a plane. Moreover, he learned that Page was selling the training plane to a barnstormer named Erold Bahl. Lindbergh tried without success to convince Page to let him solo before the plane was sold. When Bahl arrived to pick up the plane (he was embarking on a month long barnstorming tour) Lindbergh asked if he could go along as an assistant. He even offered to pay his own way. Bahl eventually acquiesced.

Lindbergh did well as an assistant, and learned to "wing walk," to step out onto the wing as Bahl flew over town. A few days into the tour Bahl offered to pay for Lindbergh's expenses. After a month of touring, Lindbergh returned to the Lincoln Standard Factory. He received several more hours flight instruction there and in June, 1922 worked in the factory for fifteen dollars a week.

One day a husband and wife parachuting team visited Lincoln on their own barnstorming tour. The Hardins had been show-jumping at county fairs across the country to earn the modest fees and to market their own brand of parachutes.

Lindbergh was fascinated by the possibilities offered by a parachute and mesmerized by the demonstration put on by the Hardins. As he watched them practice an idea for a stunt occurred to him. He approached the Hardins with it.

At a fair one could jump from a plane and deploy his parachute. After descending for a short period, the jumper could cut away the chute with a knife and plunge towards the horrified crowd below, who would assume that the chute had failed. The chutist would then deploy a second hidden parachute and safely float towards what would surely then be an adoring crowd.

The stunt had possibilities and the Hardins liked it. It was dangerous but they believed that an experienced chutist, if well prepared and well practiced, could pull it off. However, Lindbergh had different ideas. He wanted to attempt it by himself.

Both Hardins were aghast. Not only was there insufficient planning for such a stunt, Lindbergh had never made any parachute jumps. It was risky for someone with experience to attempt such a stunt; for a neophyte it was suicidal.

Lindbergh would not be deterred. He lied to the Hardins and told them that he was considering buying one of their parachutes and this would be the test. The Hardins finally agreed and Lindbergh, on his very first parachute jump, pulled off the double jump stunt. Although eventually Lindbergh did in fact acquire a Hardin parachute, it was not purchased from them but rather acquired as a settlement from Ray Page in payment for flying time owed to Lindbergh.

Shortly after, Lindbergh left the factory and went on a barnstorming tour with an excellent flyer named "Shorty" Lynch. Lynch took Lindbergh along as an assistant since he could wing walk and make parachute jumps from the plane. The publicity posters billed "Daredevil Lindbergh." The tour was successful, ending in October, and Lindbergh spent the next several months visiting first with his mother and then with his father on the farm in Little Falls.

In early 1923 Lindbergh read that the Army was selling surplus "Jennies," a nick name for the Curtis JN4D, a biplane used to train pilots during the First World War. It was slow but reliable. With his father's assistance in the form of a loan guarantee, he raised enough money to buy one from Souther Field, Georgia, for five hundred dollars.

Lindbergh still had not soloed, and, since this was before pilot's licenses were required, no one asked him whether he was a pilot. Why else would he buy one?

Never having previously flown in a Jenny, he almost crashed on his first attempt to take off. An unknown pilot who had been watching, got in the plane and helped familiarize him with it. He spent the next week or so at Souther field, living alone by his new plane and practicing flying solo in the daylight. He finally left to begin a career of flying, determined to make his living from it.

Lindbergh headed into the central part of the country, setting down in farmers' fields, and offering rides wherever he could gather a crowd. He flew to Little Falls and landed on the family farm. He helped his father campaign for office by taking him up to distribute leaflets from the air. It was his father's first ride in an airplane.

His second one was not very successful. Lindbergh had taken off and was barely fifty feet in the air when the plane dove and crashed. Lindbergh's father bloodied his face and broke his glasses. The crash also damaged the plane. Lindbergh also gave his mother her first airplane ride during his barnstorming days. She seemed to enjoy being a passenger and later accompanied him on several of his mail routes.

While Lindbergh could earn up to $250.00 at one stop if the crowds were there, making a career from barnstorming was becoming more difficult as the market became flooded. Although many pilots began undercutting the unwritten rule of five dollars per ride, Lindbergh refused to reduce his price.

His existence during this period was spartan and devoid of much human contact. Those interactions he did have were with strangers such as the people to whom he gave rides. He usually slept with his plane in farmers' fields, sleeping in the open, or under the plane in a bedroll. He had no friends to speak of and struck up no relationships with women. Clearly, Lindbergh was more at ease with the machinations of man, than he was with man himself.

Lindbergh foresaw the demise of the barnstormer and so paid particular attention to a stranger's suggestion that he should join the Army Air Corps. There, the stranger argued, he would further develop his piloting skills on more powerful machines cared for by Army mechanics.

He was attracted to the idea that the Army would broaden his skills as a pilot. Certainly they offered the most extensive training available on some of the most modern machines, and even with the regimentation inherent in military life, Lindbergh reasoned that it was his best opportunity. He wrote his letter of application, was interviewed at Fort Snelling, and took his entrance examination on January 1, 1924. He was accepted in February and told to report to Brooks Field in San Antonio, Texas on March 15, 1924.

Graduates of the year long Army Aviation Program, commissioned as second lieutenants were not required to serve a full three years. With two weeks notice they could resign and join the reserves. This also attracted Lindbergh. Flight training began in April and once again academics became an obstacle. He barely achieved a passing grade on his first examination. As a result, and perhaps for the first time in his life, he studied at night. He adapted much more quickly to the actual flying. Even though the Army had just installed left hand throttles in all their planes and Lindbergh had flown only right hand throttles, he showed great aptitude on the high powered military aircraft. By the end of June nearly half of his class of cadets had washed out.

Lindbergh did not adapt as easily to military life. He did not enjoy living in close quarters with others and he developed no personal relationships. To those who offended him, or with whom he especially did not get along, Lindbergh did not hesitate to direct cruel behaviors, often without regard for his own personal safety.

A sergeant who offended him by snoring loudly found a dead skunk in his pillow case. The stench was so overwhelming in the entire barracks as well as in his bedroll that he had to sleep outside for the next two weeks. That was apparently not enough for Lindbergh. The sergeant returned home one night to find that Lindbergh had disassembled his bed, repeatedly climbed to the roof of the barracks carrying its components, and there reassembled it. For a person who would hang from an airborne plane by his teeth, climbing to the roof was no obstacle at all.

However, Lindbergh could not take it as well as he could dish it out. When a group of five cadets attempted to throw him into a pond he became sullen and began plotting. Four of the five cadets soon found that all their underwear had been laced with itching powder, and the fifth, known to be deathly afraid of snakes, found himself in bed with one. He asked afterwards, "It wasn't venomous, was it?" Lindbergh reportedly replied, "Yes, but not fatally so."7

Lindbergh may have demonstrated superior flying skills during his Army training, and by graduation was actually second in his class, but he was not well liked. During his off hours, he continued to give lessons to students and rides to the public at a nearby commercial field.

While Lindbergh was enrolled in the Army Aviation Program his father died of an inoperable brain tumor.

Lindbergh requested a permanent U.S. Army commission. When he had not received a response by the time of his graduation, he decided to resign from active service and automatically became a member of the reserve corps. On March 25, 1925 he reentered civilian life.

Lindbergh began flying U.S. Mail as part of a fledgling effort being run out of St. Louis by two brothers named Robertson, who were exarmy air pilots from the war. Major Bill Robertson offered Lindbergh the position of chief pilot. During this time Lindbergh met up again with Bud Gurney who hired on with Phil Love and Thomas Nelson as the other pilots with the airline. This group pioneered the St. Louis to Chicago Air Mail route on a shoe string. The planes were old, and navigational and safety equipment was scarce. Only one flare was allowed per plane for night landings or bad weather.

Solitary as usual, Lindbergh put all his energies into the development of the mail route, and he openly resented it whenever the other pilots expressed interest in any outside activities. When Phil Love tried to talk on the telephone with his girlfriends, Lindbergh would make rude and loud noises in the background, finally causing Love to sneak away to make the calls. When Love returned from a date he would crawl into bed to find it filled with lizards, frogs or snakes. If he did not wake immediately when the alarm sounded, Lindbergh would rip back the covers and throw a bucket of ice water on him.

But the "joke" which had the most serious consequence, and displayed a sadistic bent on the part of Lindbergh very nearly cost Bud Gurney his life. Lindbergh did not smoke, drink coffee or liquor, nor did he socialize or dance with young women. He scoffed at those who did and derided them for their lack of "productivity." He claimed that he avoided these vices as he believed that they would impair his reflexes. He tried to force the other pilots to similarly refrain.

One night Bud Gurney returned from an evening out enjoying the company of others. Thirsty from the heat and alcohol, Gurney took up the jug of what he thought was ice water and poured it down his throat. However, Lindbergh had replaced the ice water with kerosene. Gurney was rushed to the hospital, suffered serious throat, stomach and intestinal burns, and nearly died from the ingestion.

Nelson, Love and Gurney had all in turn shared a room with Lindbergh. They all moved out. Love did so after he and his girlfriend had rigged up Lindbergh's bed and caused it to collapse when he got into it. Lindbergh said nothing to them that night but the next day told Love to move out.

There was an element of danger to the early air mail routes. But despite the lack of safety equipment most pilots attempted to operate in as safe and prudent a manner as the existing technology would allow.

Not so with Lindbergh. He would routinely set off on a mail run in weather conditions in which there was little doubt that his destination would be completely fogged in. Twice he flew into blizzards over Chicago and simply grabbed the mail pouch and parachuted out, leaving his plane to crash wherever it might end up. Upon reaching the ground he hopped a train with his pouch to continue his run.

However, not every flight posed a hazard. On clear days, when weather was not a factor, the flights provided ample opportunity for Lindbergh to contemplate his future. It was during such a flight that he first got the idea that, not only were transcontinental flights possible but so too was a transatlantic one. Lindbergh increasingly dwelled on this idea. In September of 1926 he watched a news reel which had a clip about the Orteig Prize.

Raymond Orteig, a Frenchman who operated several hotels in New York, had offered $25,000 to the first flyer or group of flyers "who shall cross the Atlantic in a land or water aircraft (heavier than air) from Paris or the shores of France to New York, or from New York to Paris or the shores of France, without stop."

The offer had first been made in 1919 and stipulated that the flight must take place within five years. This was beyond the capabilities of any plane then built and although two people had successfully crossed the Atlantic already by making several stops, the prize was reoffered by Orteig at the urging of a French newspaper.

Lindbergh decided that he would attempt the flight. Several had already perished in the process. The French ace Rene Fonck had put together significant financial backing for he and a crew of three others to fly from New York to Paris in a mammoth trimotored plane built by Sikorsky. They crashed on take off from Roosevelt Field, and two of the crew members died in the ensuing flames.

Lindbergh knew that planes must be made lighter and more streamlined for such a trip, not heavier and saddled with excess weight and crew members. He convinced a group of St. Louis businessmen to put up $10,000 to have a plane designed, built and delivered to New York in time for him to be the first to cross the Atlantic. He would do it alone. It would be a monoplane, equipped with a single powerful engine, stripped of all unnecessary weight. The gas tank would be in front of the cockpit, to cushion the possibility of injury in a crash. It would be fast, and designed for endurance.

The plane was built by a group of young, enthusiastic, bright and dedicated men at the Ryan Aircraft Company in San Diego, California. Lindbergh lived there and worked with them during construction. They felt the pressure to get the plane completed because several others had been planning the trip, including the popular Commander Byrd in a joint venture with the great Anthony J. Fokker. They were planning to fly in a trimotored plane. It crashed during a test flight.

The nation and the world took a great deal of interest in the attempts to cross the Atlantic. When another team, Captains Nungesser and Francois Coli, departed Paris on the 8th of May in a biplane, news organizations around the world tracked their progress. Radio stations interrupted their programming to give reports of sightings; all of which turned out to be false. The pilots disappeared and were never heard from again.

On May 10, 1927 Lindbergh took off from San Diego, headed for New York in his new plane, the Spirit of St. Louis. He made record time to St. Louis where he was to make a breakfast and dinner appearance with his benefactors. Lindbergh pointed out that time was of the essence, however, and left the same day for Curtis Field on Long Island.

He was unprepared for the media who awaited his arrival and astonished at how they pushed and pulled each other, how they shouted instructions to him on how to pose with the plane, and to his mind, asked him ridiculous and irrelevant questions.

It was here that Lindbergh began his long and enduring "lovehate" relationship with the press. "The press," Lindbergh wrote, "would increase my personal influence and earning capacity. I found it exhilarating to see my name in print on the front pages of America's greatest newspapers, and I enjoyed reading the words of praise about my transcontinental flight... But I was shocked by the inaccuracy and sensationalism of many of the articles resulting from my interviews... Much the papers printed seemed not only baseless but also useless."8

When his mother came to New York to join him before his flight she and Lindbergh posed together for the press. But as Lindbergh would report it, they refused to take the "maudlin position some of them had asked for."9 He was outraged the next day to see that through composite photography they ran such a picture anyway. The "maudlin" position they refused to take was Lindbergh giving his mother a kiss on the cheek.

This lovehate relationship with the media continued throughout Lindbergh's life. When he needed or wanted the press he was friendly with reporters. When they wrote complimentary or positive pieces about him, he would cooperate. But if he did not want them to ask questions, or if the press were the least bit critical, they were pariahs and "distasteful."

Yet, Lindbergh never hesitated to use the press whenever he felt it would further one of his objectives. At such times he was courteous, polite and even solicitous.

Very early on the morning on May 20, 1927, the weather was finally breaking over the north Atlantic. Lindbergh had the Spirit of St. Louis towed from Curtis to Roosevelt Field for takeoff. In a light drizzle, weighing 5,250 pounds, Lindbergh and machine lifted into the sky bound for Paris. It was a flight which would forever change the nature of aviation. No longer would winged transportation be bound by the borders of the country. Shortly after, continents and people were linked by a method of travel many saw then only as a form of amusement and which insurance companies, only four years earlier, had believed had no future. While Lindbergh may have been prepared to usher in the age of aviation, he was vastly unprepared for the attention his flight received.