MAN and moment met at a still point in a changing world. Ten years earlier, it could not have been done at all. Ten years later, it had become routine. But at this particular time, all the world could feel that its hopes, for a few excruciating and exhilarating hours, lay in the hands of one young man. And when Charles Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis on Paris' Le Bourget field, people everywhere—groundlings with a sudden vision of a boundless future—experienced a leap of the heart.
For he flew alone. And on a single engine. He was the first real hero of the machine age, and in a sense the last. For not only was he in control of his machine, he was its partner; it was still possible to love it. Today's vast machines, casually performing vastly greater feats, exact service; but they scorn affection. They require large teams to tend them, and dwarf the individual.
Charles Lindbergh's flight occurred 40 years ago last week, and no one under 50 can fully appreciate what it meant. It became America's national saga, all the more classic because its hero was to be shadowed by tragedy and did not prove to be free of flaws. "Slim" Lindbergh looked like the original country rube, with cowlick and baggy breeches, and he stirred folk memories; there was about him something of the raggedy fellow at the Sherwood tournament who outshoots the sheriff's best archers.
"The Flying Fool," they called him. Where his rivals prepared elaborate rations, Lindbergh bought five sandwiches from a restaurant, remarking: "If I get to Paris, I won't need any more, and if I don't get to Paris, I won't need any more either." When he was dragged from the plane at Le Bourget 33 hours and 30 minutes later, legend insists that he said: "Well, here we are." He was mobbed by the public and feted by the great (he had to borrow a suit to meet the President of France). President Calvin Coolidge sent a U.S. Navy cruiser to bring him home, and was waiting for him at the foot of the Washington Monument when he arrived. U.S. Ambassador to France Myron Herrick spoke for most when he declared: "He stood forth amidst clamor and crowds, the very embodiment of fearless, kindly, cultivated American youth—unspoiled, unspoilable. A nation which breeds such boys need never fear for its future." Young Lindbergh seemed engagingly modest, and remarked that he had merely wanted to prove the possibilities of future air travel and the need for commercial airports.
Man & Legend
From the start, the legend was slightly askew. Lindbergh was no Flying Fool. Even at 25, he was probably the best knockabout flyer in the U.S. He was chief pilot (of three) for a tiny airline with a newly awarded contract to fly airmail between St. Louis and Chicago. Four times, lost in fog, he had been forced to ditch his plane and jump for his life. Lindbergh had left the University of Wisconsin midway through his sophomore year to take a course in flying, bought his first plane (for $500) a year later, and qualified as a pilot in the Army Air Service. As a barnstormer, he walked wings, became a master of every stunt a Jenny could be put through. Landing was just a matter of picking the likeliest-looking pasture; navigation was done by spotting the shape of rivers, or sometimes by swooping low over the railroad station to read the signs.