It is almost impossible for a generation that takes the time – and distance – annihilating jet and even space flight for granted to appreciate the tremendous excitement with which the world heard the news on May 21, 1927 that one man in a small, single-engine airplane had flown across the Atlantic Ocean.
The only thing that compares with it is the first landing on the moon. But that was a vast team effort, the culmination of years of preparation involving the expenditure of billions of dollars. The flight of the moon capsule ”Eagle” had been worked out to the most minute detail, its crew was in constant communication with earth, even their breathing and heartbeats were continuously monitored. Millions watched the actual landing on television.
“The Lone Eagle,” Charles Augustus Lindbergh, did it all by himself – 33 1/2 hours from New York to Paris with no radio, only the crudest of navigation aids and no “backup systems” in case his craft, “The Spirit of St. Louis,” faltered in mid-ocean.
His exploit, coming less than 23 years after the Wright Brothers gave men their first fragile uncertain wings, was a one-of-a-kind event in the history of aviation. Lindbergh was an authentic hero, bursting upon a cynical decade ripe for his kind of heroism.
Only 25, handsome, modest, taciturn, the unknown Minnesota farmboy and former barnstorming pilot found himself suddenly elevated to a dazzling fame he neither expected nor wanted nor could ever accept. Kings and presidents sought him out. New York went wild upon his triumphal return. He could have become an instant millionaire had he been a different type of man and been willing to sell his name to the makers of a host of products who clamored after him.
Instead, Lindbergh devoted himself to the further progress of aviation, serving as Americas flying emissary of goodwill. He wooed and won the brilliant Anne Morrow, daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Together, they pioneered future airline routes across the Pacific to the Orient.
Then in 1932, came tragedy in the form of the kidnap-murder of their first-born son, and more notoriety of the most vicious kind. Lindbergh withdrew even more from the public eye, emerging a few years later as a spokesman for the isolationists who wanted to keep American out of Europe’s looming war.
Many could not understand this in a man who had turned the Atlantic into a puddle, who knew better than anyone else the capabilities of the modem airplane. He was no longer the hero. He was called pro-Nazi because he had visited Germany and reported Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe to be invincible.
So great was the bitterness that when America did enter World War II, Lindbergh’s offer to serve was at first refused. Only years afterward did it become general knowledge that he had conducted a valuable survey of the U.S. aircraft industry for the Army in 1939 and that, while ostensibly a civilian, had flown some 50 combat missions in the Pacific.
In later life, Lindbergh continued to live in seclusion with his family in Connecticut, pursuing interests in conservation, ecology and anthropology, as well as aviation. Not until 1953 did he publish the full story of his 1927 flight, a book he gave the name of his famous little monoplane. The lengthy list of honors, awards and medals he received includes the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Medal of Honor and the French Legion of Honor.
The death of Charles A. Lindbergh writes an end to an era in which it was possible for the lone individual, in daring exploit, to capture the imagination of the world. There will never be a hero quite like him again.