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So set was Lindbergh against U.S. entry into World War II that he raised the specter of an interventionist conspiracy composed of "the British, the Jews and the Roosevelt Administration," adding remarks about Jewish influence in communications and Government. Naturally, such talk got him into deeper trouble. TWA stopped billing itself as "the Lindbergh Line." President Franklin Roosevelt compared him to a "copperhead." Lindbergh resigned from the Army Air Corps Reserve. His attitude may have been a kind of proud echo. Twenty-four years before, his own Congressman father had denounced World War I with equal vigor (on the ground that it was a conspiracy of the "money trust" ruled by Eastern bankers) and had been similarly reviled. After Pearl Harbor, old rancors seemed lost in the community of defense, but Roosevelt refused to give him back his commission ("You can't have an officer who thinks we are licked before we start," said a White House aide). Lindbergh had to get into the war some other way, was taken on as a technical consultant for Ford and later United Aircraft. By 1944. he had wangled his way to the Pacific, and though as a "technical consultant" he was not eligible to fly in combat, squadron commanders generally had an extra plane warmed up on the line for him. Though old at 42, he flew some 50 combat missions. Perhaps more important, he brought his old genius for engineering to bear on the planes he flew, remarkably improving their effectiveness; by fiddling with the throttle settings and prop angle of the P-38s, he was able to extend their range 500 miles.
Since then, Lindbergh has slowly been restored to official favor. Eisenhower formally reinstated him into the Air Force, and promoted him to brigadier general. In his longtime association with Pan Am, he has flown every one of the planes the company has bought, and many it did not buy, on his advice. He has surveyed and helped lay out most of the routes Pan Am flies, functions as President Juan Trippe's confidant and top corporate ambassador. Only two weeks ago, he was in Saigon trying to smooth out Pan Am's mounting troubles with South Viet Nam's Premier Ky.
With the coming of the atom bomb and the rocket, Lindbergh has undergone a sea change of spirit. He obviously misses the simple machines of his youth, when "flying was an art which required the use of the body and all its senses," when the pilot sitting in an open cockpit "felt the freshness of rain, and pulling stubborn engines through kept his muscles in condition." In this new age, Lindbergh wrote, "I have felt the godlike power man derives from his machines . . . the immortal viewpoint of the higher air ... But I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved destroying the civilization I expected them to serve . . . To progress, even to survive, we must learn to apply the truths of God to the direction of our science."