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BIG CITY GETAWAY THE SPIRIT OF SAINT LOUIS MEMORIAL • WESTBURY, NY Lindbergh left Long Island in 1927 Thumbed his nose at gravity And climbed into the heavens. When he returned to Earth that night everything changed, For the pilot and the planet, everything was rearranged. Oysters & Pearls – Jimmy Buffett Everyone knows Lindbergh. We believe in amazing coincidences. It makes the world a bit more magical and fun. As we were putting this together, news came across the wires that 19-yearold Belgian-British pilot Zara Rutherford had just set the World Record for the youngest woman to fly solo around the world. Nice! But let’s talk Lindbergh. Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. At the age of 25, he went from obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame by winning the Orteig Prize for making the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris on May 20–21, 1927. Wait… this was about a prize and money. No way! Established in 1919 by Raymond Orteig, a French-American hotelier, aviation enthusiast, and philanthropist, this $25,000 prize sought to push the envelope on aviation by awarding the first person who could perform a nonstop flight between
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daytrip ideas to get out of the daily grind New York and Paris. And, we thought Lindbergh did it because it was there. But still, as Buffett sang, Lindbergh left Long Island. Nobody else did. But let’s look at some of the facts of Lindbergh’s flight The plane N-X-211 cost $10,500 and was built in an old fish cannery in San Diego by Ryan Aeronautical in downtown San Diego. On the day of its first flight, it was towed by car to a dirt airfield called Dutch Flats, about a mile from the factory. Today, both sites are located in the heart of San Diego, on the edges of the modern airport. It got its name “Spirit of St. Louis” in honor of Lindbergh’s supporters in St. Louis, Missouri, who paid for the aircraft. The plane was unique in many ways. It had no windshield. Lindbergh was flying virtually blind. Why? This odd arrangement improved the center of gravity and reduced the risk of the pilot being crushed to death between the main tank and the engine in the event of a crash. This design decision meant that there could be no front windshield, and that forward visibility would be limited to the side windows. The plane flew at an average of 600 feet and at an airspeed of just 96 mph. Lindbergh flew through darkness, fog and sleet, his plane at times skimming just 10 feet above the frigid Atlantic. To stay awake during the flight, Lindbergh stuck his hand out the window to blast his face with air and even tried resting one eye at a time.
