AIRWAYS MUSEUM Charles Lindbergh

My wife Cathy and I spent our careers in San Diego in the aircraft and spacecraft businesses . At one point , we worked a very short distance from Ryan Air , the birthplace of one of the best-known aircraft in aviation history : Charles Lindbergh ’ s Spirit of St . Louis .

DURING A VISIT to Washington , DC , we made sure we stopped at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum . Cathy and I are interested in aviation history , so it was at the top of our long list of things to do and see in the nation ’ s capital . Saying it was time well spent would be an understatement . Among the amazing displays , the Spirit of St . Louis stood out for us , as is the case , I understand , for most visitors .

Looking at it , we were just amazed that it had been successfully flown from New York to Paris on May 20-21 , 1927 .

To accommodate the significant amount of additional

Story TOM EDWARDS Photos AUTHOR , UNLESS NOTED

fuel , the wingspan had been extended to 46ft ( 14m ). The wings had been constructed with wooden frames covered in canvas , what known at the time as ‘ aircraft fabric ’. A canvas-covered steel frame was another weightsaving design concept . With the fuel tanks empty , the Spirit of St . Louis weighed 2,150lb ( 975kg ). It is 28ft ( 8.5m ) long . A Wright ( not Brothers ) J-5C single propeller engine generated 220hp ( as a retired engineer , I know that makes for a good power-toweight ratio ). Without the engine , the plane cost US $ 6,000 ( about US $ 105,000 in today ’ s money ). Lindbergh received support for his flight from Harold Bixby , the President of the St . Louis Chamber of Commerce .

As one of the many weightsaving solutions , the Spirit of St . Louis did not have a windshield . When I was very young and saw a photo of it , I wondered how it could be flown . The answer was a periscope located on the left side of the instrument panel . The other option Lindbergh had for outside viewing was to turn the plane and look out a side window .

The plane took off from Roosevelt Field — in Garden City , Long Island — which featured a long runway , at 07:52 local time . That historic first transatlantic flight lasted 33.5 hours . Given that the Spirit of Saint Louis was a single passenger plane , it had one low-weight wicker seat .

On his way to Paris , Lindbergh had to repair a leaking oil line and to deal with an ice storm , so it was a challenging flight .

Upon landing at the Aeroport Le Bourget in the City of Lights at 22:22 local time , Charles Lindbergh had flown 3,600 miles ( 5,800km ) and was greeted by approximately 150,000 wellwishers . One of them cut the Ryan Air logo off the right side of the rudder and a patch had to be quickly made .

Parisian hotel owner Raymond Orteig presented Lindbergh with a check for US $ 25,000 , calling it the Orteig Prize , for becoming the first to successfully accomplish a transatlantic flight . That US $ 25,000 in 1927 would be roughly equivalent to $ 440,000 today .

The original nose cone had been signed by the Ryan Air employees involved in its construction . Prior to the initial flight , a crack was discovered . The replacement nose cone was built and installed by Curtis

www . airwaysmag . com AIRWAYS MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2023 75