VA-Vol-5-No-7-July-1977

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Restorer's

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Corner

$!I .... R. NIELANDER "'R. J

Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Charles A. Lindbergh's non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris on May 20-21, 1927, has been the theme of almost every large aviation-oriented activity, both in th is country and abroad, for the past several months. Your EAA Museum staff, along with th e help and contribu­ tions of many other individuals and organizations, built and flew a replica of the Ryan NYP in just under five months. This replica, test flown by Paul Poberezny in late March, made its initial public appearance at the Spirit of St. Louis dedication ceremony on April 20th near the Gateway Arch on the Mississippi River bank at St. Louis. This dedication heralded the start of the com­ memorative activities. On April 27th the NYP replica was· introduced to Chicago with ceremonies at Meigs Field, Chicago's lakefront airport. Subsequently, a large fund raising dinner was held in New York by the re­ cently organized Lindbergh Memorial Foundation with Mrs. Lindbergh attending as guest of honor.

On May 20th the Antique Airplane Club of Greater New York sponsored a reenactme nt of Lindbergh's take-off using the Spirit of St. Louis replica former ly owned by Dave Jameson, EAA Museum Vice-President and past Presid e nt of your Antique/Classic Division. A special commemorative program honoring Lindbergh was held at the Pa ris Air Show. On June 15th the EAA Ryan NYP replica took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York to reenact Lindbergh's good will tour visiting 102 cities around the Un ited States including Oshkosh for convention week. Tuesday, Aug. 2, will be ce lebrated

as "Lindbergh Day".

Although I was privileged to receive a personal invita­ tion to each of the aforementioned commemorative activities, the demands of my occupation precluded my being able to attend any of them. However, I felt ex­ tremely fortunate to be able to commemorate Lind­ bergh's trans-Atlantic flight in a far more active way than being a spectator at a ceremony. I made my own

Lindbergh commemorative trans-Atlantic crossing departing the United States on May 20th and arriving in Europe on May 21 st, just as he had don e 50 years before. To be sure, Idid not depart Roosevelt Field, and I did not land at Le Bourget, nor was I flying solo, nor was I flying single engine behind a propellor, but my thoughts that entire night were on the man and his machine who, because of what he had accomplished 50 years earlier, had enabled me to enjoy the career which I so dearly love.

I thought about the absurdities which 50 years had brought to the comparison of our flights. He had flown solo in a single engine steel tube, wood and fabric mono­ plane with little more than a compass with which to navigate and a fuel load of less than 500 gallons. He had cruised at around 100 MPH, and he had found it nec­ essary to vary his altitude from several thousand feet down to the wave tops because of weather conditions.

Here was I at 37,000 feet, well above any weather, cruising at 550 MPH, and aided by a full crew, modern communications, and an automatic navigation system.

My aircraft was of all metal construction, was powered by four fan-jet engines, had been loaded with 18,500 gallons of fuel, and had weighed 161 tons at take-off. He made the crossing in a little over 33 hours, but, although I was flying a farther distance, I arrived in just 8Jf2 hours.

My thoughts turned from the absurdities of this com­ parison to Lindbergh's later accomplishments, a nd how they had affected my own life . Shortly after his

New York to Paris flight, he accepted employment with Pan American Airways as a technical director. In this capacity he flew many survey and inaugural flights, and he help ed in the development of new aircraft designs which were being built to fullfill this air line's needs. Few realize that Charl es A. Lindb ergh was actively associated with Pa n American World Airways during most of his career and that he was a member of the Board of Direc­ tors of the airline until he resigned because of poor health just three months before his death. In his various ai rline capacities he influenced the development of every transport aircraft pion eered by Pan Am up through the Boeing 747. Yes, he had indeed had a hand in the development of that very aircraft which I was flying on that 50th anniversary trans-Atlantic flight.

Lindbergh traveled extensively in his work for Pan American, and many stories are told by the flight crews about his interest in over-water navigation. He would frequently spend the entire crossing in the cockpit look­ ing over the shoulder of the navigator and watching him plot the aircraft's position a long the route. On one such occasion the navigator remarked to him, "Well, sir, this is really much easier now than it was when you did it."

Lindbergh shook his head in disagreement and replied, "No, it was much easier for me. All I had to do was find Europe. You have to stay on track."

As I started my descent over the English Channel, I thought about how much all of us who fly are indebted to the courage, ability and knowledge of this o ne man, and how I, in particular, am even more indebted to him for making my career a reality. I mentally sa luted my departed fellow employee and wished him well on his final journey.

EAA CONVENT ION TIME (Oshkosh) We extend a personal invitation to wisit with us at the Division's convention headquarters barn located Jf2 mile south of the control tower. Also, please volunteer yo ur services for any of the several committees which are constantly in need of peoplepower.

The convention forum schedule is a center fold pull­ out in this issue. Also, pl ease refer to the pullout center­ fold in the January issue of SPORT AVI ATI ON. We sincerly hope that each of you who feels that he has a show quality antique O( classic aircraft will display it in one of the two Antique/Classic Exhibit Aircraft Parking Areas. We shall be anxiously awaiting your arrival.

SEE YOU AT OSHKOSH

OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

ANTIQUE / CLASSIC

DIVISION

Editorial Staff Editor AI Kelch ssociatfi' Edilo( H. a l e),~ Buf·f ington

818W. Crock ep St. No. 20 1

Seattle, Washington 98119

of

THE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION

P.O. Box 229 Hales Corners, Wis. 53130

JULY 1977

Assistant Editor Lois Kelch

Associate Editor Robert G. Elli ott 1227 Oakwood Ave. Daytona Beach, Florida 32014

Associate Editor Edward D. Wi ll iams 713 Eastman Dr. Mt. Prospect, Illinois 60056

Restorer's Corner .... , ..... , ..... , . ... .... , . , ............ . ...... ,2

Lindbergh - How He Does It; ..... , . .. .. .. .... ,', . .... .. . . .. , .. . ... 3

"We" Smash More Records .. , ..... , .. ..... " . , . , . .. .. . .. , ., . .... ,.7

Teachin g "Lindy" Navigat ion ... ..... , ........ .. ...... , . , .......... .8

Lindbergh's Great Partner ... . .. . .. .. ........... . . . ......... .. ....11

Vintage Albu m (by Robert Elliott, Associate Editor) .... , ... , ....... . ... ... 13

What Lindbergh Found in His Mail Bag . . .... ... . , ' , .... ..... .. . . ....18

Tracking th e 'lost' barnstorming pal of 'Slim' Lindbergh ....... , . . . ... , . . 21

The First Plane to Germany . ... . , ..... .... . . ... . ... '. .. .. , .. . , ... ..25

Lindbergh's Career Highlights .. .... . .. . ... .. ..... .... .......... , . ..26

Associate Editors will be id ent ified in the tabl e of con· tent s on arti cles th ey send in and repea ted on the arti cle if they have written it. Associa te Editorships will be assigned to th ose wh o qu ali fy (5 arti cles in any cale nd ar year).

Directors ANTIOUE AND CLASSIC DIVISION

OFFICERS PRESIDENT J.R. NIELANDER, JR. P,O , BOX 2464 FT. LAUDERDALE, FL 33303 VICE·PRESIDENT

JACK WI NTH ROP

RT.l. BOX111

ALLEN. TX 75002

Claude L. Gray. Jr.

9635 Sylvia Avenue

Northridge. California 9 1324

AI KelCh

70 18 W. Bonniwell Road

Mequon. W isconsin 53092

James B. Horne

3840 Coronation Road

Eagan. Minnesota 55122

Eva nder M. Britt

Box 1525

Lumberton, North Carolina 28358

Box 113

Brownsburg, Indiana 46112

M. C. "Kelly" Viets

RR 1, Box 151

Stillwell, Kansas 66085

William J. Ehlen

Route 8, Box 506

Tampa, Florida 33618

Morton Le ster

P.O. Box 3747

Martinsville. V irginia 2411 2

George E. St ub bs

EAA ANTIQUE/CLASSIC DIVISION MEMBERSHIP o o

Advisors SECRETARY

RICHARD WAGNER

P.O. BOX 181

LYONS. WI 53148

TREASURER

E,E, "BUCK" HILBERT

8 j 02 LEECH RD .

UNION, IL 60180

W. Brad Thomas, Jr .

301 Dodson Mil l Road Pilot Mountain . North Carolina 27041

VOLUME 5 NUMBER 7

Dale A . Gustafson

7724 Shady Hill Drive

Indianapolis. IN 46274

Robert A . White

1207 Falcon Drive

Orlando, Florida 32803

Roger J. Sherron

446-C Las Casi t as

Santa Rosa. CA 95401

Arthur R . Mo rg an

513 North 91 st Street

Mil wa u kee. Wisco nsin 53226

Stan Gom oll

104290th Lane, N . E.

Mi nn eapolis , MN 554 34

THE V INTAGE AIRPLANE is owned excl usi vel y b y A nt iq ue Cl assi c Ai rcra h . Inc. and is publi sh ed m o nthly at Hales Corners, Wisconsin 53 130. Second ic lass Post age pai d at H ales Co r ners Pos t O ffi ce, Hales Cor ners, W isco nsin 53130. and additional mailing offices. Membership rates for Anti q ue Class ic A ircra ft , Inc . at $14.00 per 12 month period of which $ 10.00 is for [he puolic~t ion of THE VINTAGE AIRPLANE . Membership is open t o all w ho ar e interested in aviation .

o

NON·EAA MEMBER - $34,00. Includes one year membership in the EM Antique/Classic Division. 12 monthly issues of THE VINTAGE AIRPLANE; one year membership in the Experimental Aircraft Associa­ tion, 12 monthly issues of SPORT AVIATION and separate membership cards.

NON· EAA MEMBER - $20.00. Includes one year membership in the EAA Antique/Classic Division. 12 monthly issues of THE VINTAGE AIRPLANE; cne year membership in the Experimental Aircraft Associa­ tion and separate membership cards. SPORT AVIATION not included.

EAA MEMBER - $14.00. Includes one year membership in the EAA Antique/Classic Division, 12 monthly issues of THE VINTAGE AIRPLANE and membership card . (Applicant must be current fAA member and must give EAA membership number.

ON THE COVER

"The Spirit of St. Louis", alias "The Spirit of EAA ", flying natur­ ally over water. (Photo by Jack Cox.)

PICTURE BOX (Back Cover)

Leon Klink, Age 79, Slim's old barn­ storming pal, taken at the St. Louis Museum. See story page 27.

Copyright C 1977 Antique Classic Aircraft. Inc. All Rights Reserved .

2

MONTHLY APRIL ,

SUMNER N. BLOSSOM Editoy

191.8

v e l. .

1 1 1. , 1\:0 .4

Lindbergh-How He Does It; An Amazing Revelation

H .

"SLIM"

ERE are answered the questions everybody has been asking in recent months­ How does "Lindy" always succeed; always fly where he says he will, when he says he will? It is a fascinating story of the two sides of the famous aviator

By

CALEB JOHNSON

LINDllERGH, an unknown aviator, took off from Roosevelt Field on the morn­ ing of May 20, 1927, and landed at Paris the following night. Colonel Charles A. Lind­ bergh came back from Paris on the Memphis, a world-famous hero.

Everybody has been reading about Colonel Lindbergh ever since. He has done things nobody ever did before.

He has made forty-eight flights in the United States, one to every state, and always arrived precisely on schedule.

He has flown to Mexico, to the capitals of Central America, to Panama, to Colombia, to Venezuela and to the West Indies, again always on schedule.

And as "ambassador without portfolio" he has dis­ played a poise, a sense of modesty, a facility in saying and doing the right thing at the right time which have made some wonder whether he was not something more than human. Not a single break. I set out to discover the secret of Lindbergh's success as a flyer and as an unoffi­ cial diplomat and publ ic character. And I found - Slim.

Back of the Colonel, always Slim. Standing off and looking at himself, as it were, Slim Lindbergh, deter­ mini ng in advance how Colonel Lindbergh ought to act,

3

Editor's Note: In honor of Lindbergh's 50th Anni­ versary, this issue is mostly comprised of articles collected by Dale Crites, at the time of Lindbergh's epic flight and are printed as they were then, unedited by us. I thank Dale for sharing them with us, and give credit to Popular Science Month­ ly from wh ich most of the articles were gleaned.

AI Kelch

talk, look, in any given set of circumstances. And guiding Colonel Lindbergh's hand on the controls of the Spirit of St. Louis was Slim Lindbergh, airman, with everything figured out in advance - how to act, what to do, in any flying emergency. In the air, indeed, Colonel Lindbergh disappears. It is Slim Lindbergh alone up there in the plane.

Do I make it clear? Let me illustrate with a story Dick Blythe told me. Dick was Lindbergh's adviser on public relations after the return from France; they lived together, ate together, sometimes had to sleep together.

One rare evening when there were no engagements they thought of going to the theater together.

"Hold on a minute," said Slim. "We've got to look at Colonel Lindbergh. What ought the Colonel to do about this?"

"What do you mean?" asked Blythe puzzled.

"Why, it's plain enough," replied Slim. "If I go to the theater as somebody's guest, or as one of a special party, there's no harm done. But if I go on my own initiative, that's my deliberate choice of a show. Some­ body's going to make capital out of it. 'Lindy picked the . . . . . . . as the best show in New York.' Get me? Slim can do as he pleases, but Colonel Lindbergh has got to watch his step."

The incident contains the whole secret of Lindbergh's success, both as a flyer and as an unofficial diplomat. It boils down to one word - forethought.

That was the answer I got, in one form or another, from everyone I hunted up who could throw light on the mystery of Lindbergh. Pilots and mechanics who had flown with him, who had serviced his plane and his engine, been with him as ca:lets at Kelly Field in Texas or gossipped with him in the airmen's favorite occupa­ tion of "ground flying"; men who had been on ship­ board with him, who have known him intimately in the year since he flew to Paris, who have been h is advisers in many ways-all told me substantially the same thing.

Foresight - preparedness-constant study and thought-always looking ahead, to be ready for any situation-any emergency- that's Slim.

Before he took off from Washington for his recent Latin-American flight, he had studied maps of every country he planned to visit; he knew about every landing field available; and by hours at the Navy Hydrographic Office he had informed himself of prevailing weather conditions, probable future conditions and even possible conditions aloft and on the ground and in between. He

had obtained to take with him charts with all this data, prepared by Navy experts.

Moreover, he had seen to it that his plane and engine would be properly cared for at the several ports of call.

The United States Marines, the Army and Navy and the Wright Company, manufacturers of his engine, all co­ operated with Latin-American air experts in providing the mechanical care upon which Lindbergh knows suc­ cessful flight depends.

That's one picture of Lindbergh's foresight. Add to it a personality which is instantly appealing and attractive, to men as well as to women, and you have accounted for all of Lindbergh's successes. And in hunting for the secret of these successes, I found another picture of Lindbergh, one which the public has not seen at all­ Slim Lindbergh, practical joker.

There's a hint of it in We, Lindbergh's book, where Lindy tells of a certain episode involving a sergeant, a skunk and the enforced ventilation of the barracks. He doesn't confess, in his book, but Ted Moseley, who hasn't been heard from since he left Daytona Beach last January to fly north with films of President Coolidge's visit to Havana, put that episode entirely up to Slim.

On the Memphis, coming back from Paris, Slim rigged up a gadget to work a shower bath from the outside. He tried it first on a newspaperman who, fully clothed and expecting to get a "human interest'" item out of the "invention" Slim asked him to inspect, stepped under the shower and got literally "all wet" when Lindbergh pulled the string. Officers in full uniform, hearing the commotion, seeking its source, were enjoying a good laugh at the newspaperman's expense when Slim pulled the string again.

An irrepressible boy-that's one side of Slim. A boy whose idea of fun takes such forms as tying Dick Blythe's toe to the bedpost with a necktie, after Dick had gone to sleep, and having himself called early so as to be sure to be on hand when Dick, trying to jump out of bed, landed on his head. Go down to one of the great air fields on Long Island and do some ground flying with "Casey" J ones, "Merry" Merrill and the other airmen if you want to hear of pitchers of cracked ice emptied into other fellows' beds, glasses of water carefully spilled on the seats of chairs in which high-hatted and dignified exponents of aviation were about to sit down-and did.

Yet Slim, according to the men who knew him in the old "barnstorming" days and at Kelly Field, never was a "mixer." A good enough sport, when with the crowd,

The Colonel

"Slim"

The Colonel: Charles A. Lindbergh at a formal public function, being a personage successfully, not because he enjoys it, but because it is the thing expected of him and so he has learned to do it.

Slim: Charles A. Lindbergh, world's matchless genius of flight - the real Lindbergh. With flying togs put over eve­ ning attire for a quick flight, he will in a moment be "where he lives, .. in the air.

4

moting public interest in flying. But once the curtain drops, Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, public character, dis­ appears and Slim takes his place.

"Let's beat it out of here," said Col. Lindbergh one night at a theater party recently in New York. "I'm tired to death, I want to go to bed." On the way to his hotel someone started to talk about aviation: it was half past four in the morning when Slim turned in! "He'd have been talking yet if we hadn't gone away and left him," one of his friends told me. And how the man can ask questions when he comes across anybody who appears to know more than he does about any phase of aviation!

"The only time I ever saw Undbergh when he seemed completely happy was when he was getting into his plane to start off on a flight- any flight," Casey Jones, veteran pilot and head of the Curtiss Aviation Service, WASHING TON

/// (l1ArTA, N('('GA

While "Slim" Lindbergh rests at Hasbrouck Heights, N./ ., a mechanic overhauls his plane

but seldom with the crowd by preference. He doesn't drink, and he never exhibited the interest in girls which most young men of his age have. "They interfere with a fellow's work," he told a friend. And Slim's work is flying.

"He'd land on the field and say howdy to any other flyers that happened to be there, get the necessary in· formation about gas and supplies and then just flock by himself," said one who remembered Slim as a barn­ stormer.

He followed the same habit at Kelly, Ted Moseley said. "A lone bird, always busy, but always by himself when possible. He always had some problem working out in his mind. He had to be busy all the time, and would tinker with his plane all day, when he wasn't flying. Talking to nobody except about things concerned with flying. When he did join the bunch, as often as not a practical joke was Slim's way of relieving his mental tension. " He works that way today. Studying all the time; thinking out problems of flying. It isn't a sport, a pastime, or merely a means of livelihood with him; it is his whole life. · Everything else bores him . He goes through with formal functions, offical visits to foreign countries, because those are part of the program of pro­

5

//

"

HOOST~'/

Lindbergh though he offered a good deal more for ·it than we afterwards got from Levine. We just didn't think anybody ought to try to cross the Atlantic in a singl e­ motored plane. We didn't know Slim then. So he went out to the Coast and got the Ryan people to build him a plane. And if you don't believe that he knew just what he wanted, and stood over the job to make sure that he got it, you don't know Slim. There isn't anything about a plane or an engi ne that he doesn't know.

"We didn't want to sell him an engine, either; we thought he was taking too long a chance. If B. Franklin Mahoney, president of the Ryan Airlines, hadn't had a contract with us under which we were bound to deliver a Whirlwind engine whenever he had a customer for it, Slim never would have got his. Mahoney called me up on the telephone from San Diego and talked me into ship­ ping the engine, but believe me, we gave it an extra inspection and a few prayers before we shipped it."

Planning, studying navigation, learning everything he could about weather and reading weather maps, getting pictures of the terrain and the landing fields so that he would know where he was and how to land, he is a flyer who takes few chances. There's nothing of the daredevil about Slim. He has had every kind of experience an airman can have, except war; he has met and .conquered every kind of emergency which can happen to a flyer.

Nothing frightens him, because he knows what his plane can do, what his engine can do, and what he, Slim Lindbergh, can do

Map of Lindbergh's air visit to southern neighbors

told me. "He doesn't feel at home or seem at ease any­ where except in the air."

That's just it. He isn't at home anywhere except in the air; but in the air is where he lives.

"Few people know that Lindbergh planned his Paris flight for more than a year," J. T. Hartson, of the Wright Company, told me. "He went at his preparations quietly but thoroughly. The first thing he did was to come East and talk with all the experts he could find as to the best type of plane to use. He concluded a monoplane was the thing, because of its lift and speed, and asked us to sell him the Bellanca which Chamberlin later flew across in.

We had thought of going into the plane business as well as making engines, and had engaged Bellanca to design a ship for us, which we built. We wouldn't sell it to

Col. Lindbergh (the tall man in the foreground wearing a soft hat) looks over his plane shortly before hopping off for Latin America.

~

"The Spirit of St. Louis", alias "The Spirit of EAA ': just completed and ready for the U.s. Commemorative Tour.

"Before I ever saw Lindbergh's face I was sold on him," Eddie Mulligan, dean of the Wright service corps, told me. "I had been sent to look over his motor, and the minute I saw that shiny nose of his plane circling around for a landing, I knew there was a flyer inside of her. Don't ask me how I knew it; you can't tell it in words, but when you've seen as many planes and pilots as I have you know without anyone telling you whether the chap knows his controls.

"Well, he was sizing me up and I was sizing him up .

'Anything we can do for you?' I asked. He suggested some things about the engine that might be looked after, and I knew then that he knew all about it. And he could tell, I guess, from the way I answered him, that I knew what I was talking about. Anyway, he said: 'Whatever the Wright people think ought to be done, go ahead and do it.'

"He can spot an expert when he meets him, and he'll do what the expert tells him. That's how he got by over in Paris, as near as I can figure it. He spotted Ambas­ sador Herrick for an expert and let him tell him what to do, and he knew Morrow in Mexico for an expert, too . It takes a fellow who's got the stuff in him to recognize expert advice when he hears it, and to act on it."

Preparing and planni ng. Out at San Diego he was

studying navigation, with Lieutenant Eric Nelson, all the while his plane was being built. When he came East he took it up again with Bruce Goldsborough, treasurer of the Pioneer Instrument Company, which built the earth inductor compass that still guides Slim's flights. Slim had his maps all marked off and learned by heart, mastered every navigation instrument which one man could op­ erate in an inclosed cabin plane, long before he started .

And everything he could learn from Commander Byrd and Chamberlin, who were planning a flight across the ocean, he learned . When he set out on his trans continen­ tal tour he had prepared in the same way. Equally detail­ ed were his preparations for his southern flight. He began to prepare to go to Latin America within a week after he returned from Paris. And when he started he had every scrap of available useful information.

One thing which worried Slim's friends when he set out to cross the Atlantic was the fear that he would fall asleep- a danger every experienced airman dreads in a long flight . But Lindbergh had figured out the sleep problem at the beginning; that was one reason he chose a plane with an inclosed cabin; he figured that inability to see above and ahead would be more than compensated for by the protection against sleep-provoking wind, and he invented his famous periscope to compensate for the visual disadvantage of the cabin. And he had practiced

keeping awake, too, several times for 30 to 40 hours and just before he started to fly East he stayed awake for 49 hours. Can you beat that for preparedness?

Slim had, as everyone remembers, less than two hours sleep in the twenty-four preceding his start; he had planned to go to bed early that night, but a late tel­ ephone call from Dr. James H. Kimball of the U.s.

Weather Bureau, telling him that the reports from the Atlantic looked favorable, kept him on his toes most of the night, preparing to hop off at dawn.

Nothing makes him so "sore," his friends say, as to have it suggested that his flights are flukes or lucky accidents. It was to disprove such suggestions that he insisted upon going to Central America before the Spirit of St. Louis goes into a museum.

"It figures out this way, when you're trying to account for Slim," said Eddie Mulligan . "He learned how to take care of himself and his plane and engine when he was barnstorming. Then he was graduated from Kelly Field and when a man gets through Kelly he's a real flyer . Then he went into the air mail service, and if anything can teach a pilot how to act in an emergency it's the air mail. Fog and snow and sleet on the wings doesn't make any difference to them. The mai l must go on schedule." ~

6

"We" Smash More Records

- - - ~~-­ ),--­ .

'~

ATLANT IC OCEAtJ

Lindbergh's Plane Good as New After Flying 35,580 Miles ~LEGEND~

SAN 01£60 TO PARIS - - - - ­ WA5H INGTON TO /"IEXlCO _ ._ .,. .­

AROGNO AMERIC A ....

MISCELLAN(OUS .._.•

•

II

Colonel Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis landing at the Valbuena Airport, Mexico Cityon "good will" flight to Central America.

By

ELLSWORTH BENNETT

ClHTlH.l AI'IER1GA ROUT[ - . -- -- .. ­

When Col. Char les A_ Lindbergh touched the soil of Central America on his latest "good will" hop, his fa­ mous mechanical partner, the Spirit of St. Louis, had carried him, altogether, 35,580 miles- nearly equal to one and one-half times around the globe! And this with­ out sign of falte ring, and with only a few minor repairs.

While the world renewed its tribute to Lindbergh as a genius of flight, engineers were acclaiming the triumph of his silver monoplane as one of the amazing mechan­ ical performances of all time. Roaring at a speed far faster than an express train's, the machine had within seven months borne its pilot across the American con­ tinent, over the Atlantic Ocean, through every state in the Union , and then to Mexico City and Guatemala. And here it was, safe and sound, apparently as fit as ever!

Its air-cooled Whirlwind motor had run for more than 370 hours without a failure, surviving well beyond the average life span of modern power plants of its type , reckoned at 300 hours. And it was still turning smoothly. Indeed, just before the 2000-mile trip from

7

Washington to Mexico City, the master mechanic at Bolling Field, Washington, had gone over the plane and had pronounced it in as perfect condition as the day it left the factory!

The accompanying map shows the long trail of Lind­ bergh's remarkable flights since the day, last May, when he hopped off from San Diego on his great adventure. It constitutes a picture-record of unequaled mechanical and human endurance.

Lindbergh's return from France was quickly followed by a 22,350-mile tour of the country. This was complet­ ed without a single overhauling, and with no mechanical difficulties or forced landings. Only one failure of sched­ ule occurred, when Lindbergh decided not to risk a land­ ing in the fog at Portland, Me. When, at the end of th e tour, the motor was taken down, mechanics found it necessary to replace only bushings, a rocker arm and two Above: General Obregon (with glasses) and President

valves-after more than 32,000 miles.

Today the Spirit of St. Louis is still good for many Calles, watching Lindbergh land on the Central American

Tour. more months of service. ~

Teaching

~~Lindy"

Navigation

Why the World's Greatest Pilot Is

Learning from a Tutor the ABC's

of the Science of Finding His Way

By BOYDEN SPARKES Lindbergh, it was announced recently, has an instruc­ tor who is teaching him navigation. To most people this seemed as silly as if President Coolidge had engaged someone to teach him political economy; or as if Persh­ ing had begun to study under a drill sergeant.

Americans had thought of Lindbergh as the world's grea test aerial navigator. So he is, if by navigator you mean one skilled in finding his way; but mariners have a more precise understanding of the word. As a matter of fact, Lindbergh himself has explained that he knew nothing of celestial navigation when he flew from New York to Paris. Commander Byrd is a navigator. Lind­ bergh is a pilot skilled in following a course by dead reckoning. Any cadet at Annapolis knew more than Lindbergh about navigatio n, until the Colonel began his st udies.

To understand this sup po se you and Lindbergh and Byrd were motori ng across the great American desert at night and then, on a map, plot a course to the nearest service station. By the time this is published, though, Lindbergh probably will have learned enough of naviga­ tion to locate his position .exactly anywhere.

Lindbergh's teacher is Lieutenant Commander Philip V. W. Weems, until recently commander of th e naval supply ship Cuyama, an officer quite as modest in demeanor as Lindbergh . When "Lindy" flies nowadays, Weems flies with him, and as they dart through the air America's most famous young man gets his lessons­ lessons that have been so simplified that any bright grade school boy probably could master them.

During a recent visit of Lindbergh to San Diego, Commander Wee ms told the trans-Atlantic flyer that he had perfected what he believes is a "foolproof" set of navigation instruments for flyers. By ordinary methods it requires from fifteen minutes to half an hour to plot a position; that is, to find, by mea ns of navigational in-

struments, where you are. Weems' simplified method reduces this time to forty seconds on a sta rlit night, or two minutes by day.

An air mail flyer is a pilot, not a navigator. A pilot is essentia ll y a person fami liar with a given course and ab le to find his way by landm arks. Norm ally an aviator flying cross-co untry is provided with a map of the regio n below him. Favored by good weather, he flies along a corridor about eighty miles wide, the side limits being formed by his ability to see. His map may show a railroad running parallel to his course. Dimly, far to one side, he sees the smoke of a locomotive. There is his railroad! He swings in that direction and follows the tracks. If he has been flying 105 miles an hour for two hours, he knows he should be approximately 210 miles from his starting point. The map shows a river crossing his course at right angles 245 miles from his starting point. He begins to watch for that river. Soon he sees ahead a dull bron ze ribbon set smoothly in the checkerboard of cultivated fields and patches of woods. There is his river. Assured that he is on his course, he flies on, watching now for a small city the map shows to be about ten minutes far­ ther along. That is piloting.

A motorist mak ing an overland journey from St. Louis to Omah a employs the same kind of skill when he "turns right at X-roads" or "jogs left and then right" at the stone church. The aviator, of course, uses a compass to aid in steering toward his goal. If he becomes lost in a fog, he may swoop down close to land and read the legend on a railroad station. A motorist would achieve the same result by stopping at the first house and asking where he was and how to get to the next town. That sort of thing, on land or sea, is piloting. Generall y, though, a pilot knows all the landmarks and guides himself accord­ ingly.

Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris by dead reck-

Above: Lindbergh's tutor in the science of navigation, Lieute­ nant Commander Philip V. W. Weems, U.S.N., demonstrates the simplest method of taking bearings, using a sextant and

the wrist watch seen on his left arm.

oning, which represents the highest skill in piloting, but still is far short of scientific navigation. Before h is start he had plotted his course on a chart. He knew the speed of his airplane. But how did he keep on his course?

Fastened in the little window above his head was a magnetic compass. But this instrument was of little serv­ ice to him. If he had been a navigator he might have used it effectively to determine by means of sun or stars where he was; but since he was not, he had provided himself with an earth inductor compass. With this Lind­ bergh knew at every stage of his journey just how he was heading. A dial was set horizontally near his right hand, with a little crank projecting from its center and with an indicator needle fastened to the rim of its case. A turn of the crank caused the indicator to show on the dial the exact point of the compass toward which his plane was heading. On that splendid instrument he based all his calculations-but he was piloting by dead reckoning. He knew he had been flying so many hours, at such and such a speed, with a wind that was causing him to drift from his course a certain amount in each hour.

When he returned to America, Lindbergh confided to friends that if he ever made another trans-Atlantic flight

8

he would take a navigator 'with him. Experiences during part of his flight showed him the value of such scientific knowledge. While flying above the clouds at an altitude of 10,000 feet, he could not read from the stars the important information they have given to countless mariners. He lacked the skill and the instruments to fix his posiiton by the angle of certain of those stars from the horizon. At that altitude he was almost certain that a tail wind was helping him considerably toward his goal.

Yet to remain there would have meant abandoning the one sure means of staying on his course-that of observ­ ing the direction of the wind and the drift of his plane.

In the course of the night, lack of such observations, which were possible only near the surface of the sea, might upset his dead reckoning calculation by several hundreds of miles. So he had to descend. If he had been a celestial navigator then he might have ridden high on the wind, saved gallons of gasoline, and reached Paris earlier than he did; because he could have determined just where he was by observation of heavenly bodies and corrected h is course at any time.

The mariner on the bridge of a ship floating on the sea and the aviator in the cockpit of his craft in the air above the sea have the same problem when they seek to determine their position with relation to the earth.

On a certain day of the year a Peary, or a Byrd, standing at the North Pol e, might pivot on his hee l once in twenty-four hours and keep in view at all times the sun on the horizon. On that .same day an observer on the equator would see the sun rise out of the east, and at noon glare down from directly overhead.

Daily those angles of the sun above the horizon alter as the earth spins on its elliptical orbit about the sun.

Remember that the equator is a line of latitude. All the lines marked on your globe as concentric circles, growing smaller toward the poles, are circles of latitude. There are ninety of the arbitrary divisions between the equator and the North Pole, and ninety others between the equa­ tor and the South Pole. Each such division is further divided into sixty parts called minutes. At noon take your pocketknife and sight along the handle to the hori­ zon. Next lift the blade until it points to the sun. From the same place of observation, at noon the next day, the angle between handle and blade will be slightly different.

Tables have been worked out to show what those angles should be at noon of every day in the year and at any place on the earth's surface.

Navigators read those angles with an instrument

9

called, because its graduated metal arc forms one sixth of a circle, a sextant. With this they measure the angular distance between a heavenly body and the horizon by means of a double reflection from two mirrors. In comparatively recent times these finely made in­ struments have been improved by the addition of a spirit level, the bubble in which serves the navigator as an artificial horizon.

Wh en a navigator has determined the angle of the sun above the horizon and fixed his position according to latitud e, only half his task has been done. He also wants to know the precise degree and minute of longitude.

Every schoolboy knows that the meridians of longitude run from pole 'to pol e, cutting across the equator at right angles. The meridian on the globe mark ed "0" runs north and south through a village on the Thames, below London, called Greenwich. Ten degrees west of Green­ wich is another line of longitude. Ten degrees east is another, and so on. These lines of longitud e divide the world for the mariner into degrees.

There are 360 of them, so that "0" at Greenwich swings over the top of your globe and reveals itself in the Pacific as "180."

A watch set to Greenwich apparent time shows how far the sun is from Greenwich. When a navigator observes the sun overhead five hours after Greenwich apparent noon he knows he is in longitude seventy-five degrees west. For such observations he uses a finely adjusted watch called a chronometer, which is set to Greenwich apparent sun time.

For night work he employs the same sextant that serves him by day, a record of the altitude curves of stars, and another chronometer which is set to Green­ wich Sidereal time. Sidereal means "of the stars."

There has been a tendency on the part of some aerial pilots to scorn navigation. A few have scoffed at Commander Byrd's emphasis on the necessity for understanding navigation before risking trans-ocean flights. Some have tried to silence arguments by referring to the uncanny accuracy of Lindbergh's dead reckoning.

Most of them probably have believed that it would require years of mathematical study to learn navigation.

For the man who is to direct a battleship fleet this is true. For the pilot of an airplane it is not. He may learn in a few weeks, even though his education stopped short of finishing high School A new word is going into the dictionaries before long to accentuate the difference. I nstead of being called

navigators, the men who find their position in the air by means of sun or stars will be called "avigators," and their branch of the science will be "avigation." Navigation was formed of th e Latin words "navis," meaning ship and "agere," to move or direct. "Avis" means bird, and so we now have th e word avigation just coming into use.

An avigator will be anyone capable of finding his posi­ tion in the air by means of radio, dead reckoning, pilot­ ing, or celestial navigation.

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics recently complete some studies which contain the essen­ tials of "avigation." This is the knowledge Lindbergh is mastering. When he completes his studies under Commander Weems, he will be able to find his position at night in less than one minute. He will not need to know astronomy, logarithms, or any form of high er mathematics. He will "find himsel f" solely by observa­ tions of sextant altitude and watch time of two stars.

The altitudes of a pair of stars are plotted as curves by this new method; and the point where those curve lines cross one another gives a direct reading of latitud e. At the same time it reveals the amount of time that must be subtracted from the watch to determ ine the longitude.

No correction to watch or sextant need to be calculated.

With these star curves, a chronometer, and a bubble sex­ tant, an avigator, flying above fogs and clouds, will be able to identify his position as often as he lik es.

Before flyers began to test their wings in trans-ocean flights, all they had in the way of navigational in­ struments were a map and a compass, often out of "whack" because of its proximity to the steel of the engine.

But when they began to fly out of sight of land they began to learn something about dead reckoning, that faculty by which mariners, blinded by fog or the failure of their navigational instruments, still keep some track of their progress.

A blind man counting the cracks in the cement paving blocks under his feet, keeping track of the street in­ tersections he has crossed, is traveling by dead reck­ oning. If he forgets the number of streets crossed since leaving his starting point, he is lost until he asks someone to tell him where he is. Aviators, flying over the trackless ocean, unless they are navigators, are like blind men.

Most pilots who have attempted trans-ocean fl ights have not been navigators.

Mariners see in the appalling death list of these daring men and women a cause not apparent to most people.

/

.fndbergh used for dead-reckoning.

A mistake on ' 4ead-reckoning cannot be determined until the end of the flight.

Lower: Celestial navigation gives a constant corrected posi­ tion.

They believe some of those lives might have been saved if the lost flyers had understood navigation.

It was because naval officers are obi iged to be naviga­ tors that Commander John Rodgers, flying in his PN-9 plane from California to Hawaii in September, 1925, was able to save the lives of himself and his crew, when forced down on the sea by lack of fuel. For ten days Rodgers and his men were accounted lost. But they were never lost. Using the same instru ments he would have used if his craft had been a battleship, Commander Rodgers established his position. He was 300 miles from his destination . Sails were improvised and day after day he and h is men worked nearer and nearer to the small tropical islands.

But when the Dole prize was offered as an induce­ ment for aviators to make another try for a nonstop flight from California to Hawaii, many planes and many lives were lost. One, the Golden Eagle, is believed to have passed to the north of the Hawaiian Islands, and to have flown on and on over the ocean waste search ing for

the land they had failed to find by dead reckoning, until their fuel gave out.

Only a navigator could have performed the feat of Commander Byrd in flying to the Pole and return over a triangular course. Only a navigator could have been sure when he arrived at the North Pole. Wilkins was a naviga­ tor. So was Peary. They had to be.

Chamberlin, flying with his passenger, Levine, from Long Island to Europe, was inexpert in navigation. He flew by dead reckoning; but it is significant that Cham­ berlin and Levine did not announce their destination.

"Rome or Berlin" was all they would say in advance of their departure. That left them a wide margin of error, with still the prospect of a safe landing "somewhere in Europe."

As a typical example of what aviators flying by dead reckoning are up against, there is the case of the Bremen flyers, Koehl, Fitzmaurice, and Von Huenefeld, who were lost in the air when they sighted the lighthouse on.

Greenly Island. A savage storm had upset their calcula­ tions by dead reckoning. They knew they had reached land, but what land they did not know until they were told.

Lindbergh, Chamberlin, and Byrd, on their flights from America to Europe, were not bothered so much by compass variation as were the pilots of the fl ights from Europe to America. Unless taken into exact account, that variation would have mislead all of them into flying northward off their course into the almost uninhabited wilds of Labrador. Drift indicators, too, operate only where there is good visibility, and at least we know none of those westward flyers experienced good visibility.

Everything tended to make their dead reckoning less exact than the marvelously efficient reckoning of Lind­ bergh:.,.

This explains why aviators, yarning with one another about the tragic attem pts to fly from Europe to · America, wonder if some of the missing planes are not actually hidden in the wastes of Labrador. It is even possible, some of them believe, that North America actually received Nungesser and Coli and their White Bird; Hamilton, Minchin and the Princess Lowenstein­ Wertheim; St. Roman and Mouneyres; Captain Hinch­ liffe and Miss Mackay. Once they lost track of their progress they were as lost as children who stray into the woods. Whether any of them are imprisoned in those Northern woods is a secret that may not be revealed to this generation. ~

1C

,

Lindbergh s Great Partner

M echanical Marv els of th e Monoplane, EnKine and Precision Instrum ents That Carried Him to Fame

By

FRANK P AR KER S TOCKBRI DGE

Interior of the monoplane's cockpit, showing instruments and controls by which Lindbergh guided himself to Paris with almost uncanny precision.

Lindbergh is seen at the little window of his inclosed cabin. Driving mecha­ nism of earth inductor compass. Power is generated by a tiny windmill at the top.

11

"We," sa id Lindbergh. "My plane and I." The plane first. Right. The courageous young flyer co ul d never have made his magnificent ocean hop with­ out a plane . Planes have flown without a pi lot, radio­ contro ll ed; one may yet fly pilotless from New York to Paris. Bu t that is another story. This is abo ut Lind­ bergh's pla ne.

Give Lindbergh, the man, every last ounce of credit for courage, judg ment and flying skill, yet his plane and its equipment had to be as good of their kind as he is of his kind. What is it like, then, this last word in airplanes?

How does it differ from other planes which previously had tried long-distance flights and failed?

The Spirit of St. Louis embodies all that has been learned about airplane design and construction since the Armistice. The war taught aircraft designers a great deal, especially about bui lding fighting planes. ButNo airplane which was in existence at the signing of the Armistice, on November 77, 7978, equipped with any engine which was then in existence, could have made the flight which Lindbergh made.

War demanded high speed, great maneuverability, a high ceiling and power with which to climb to it quickly.

Peace time aviation calls for safety, stability, endurance and reliability, minor considerations in fighting planes intended for short flights at top speed.

In its elemental design, Lindbergh's plane embodies one lesson learned from war. It is a monoplane.

American aviation began with biplanes, and America has stuck consistently to biplanes ever since, until re­ cently . France began with monoplanes. Had it not been for Glenn Curtiss's victory with his biplane, when he won the first international aviation trophy at Rheims, in 1909, American aircraft designers might have considered the monoplane a little more seriously in the early days of the . art. But the Curtiss's victory was regarded as a triumph of the biplane, regarded as the safer and more stable of the two types and capable, as was dem­ onstrated at Rheims, of even greater speed.

England followed America's lead, in the main, with the resu lt that the great majority of the airplanes used by the Allies in the war were bip lanes. But some of the

Wright Whirlwind motor which drove the Spirit of St. Louis 3647 miles without missing a stroke.

French monoplanes proved their superiority in many respects, and when the war ended students of aviation generally agreed that the one small plane which had given the best account of itself, on either side, was the German Fokker, designed by a Dutchman from French models.

That stimulated the development of the monoplane after the war, for commercial use. In America only one successful monopla ne had been developed in 1919, by Grover Clevel and Loening. Today at least eight of the most widely-known makes of airplanes have but one pair of wings. It was a monoplane, the Columbia-Bellanca, which carried Chamberlin and Levine on their record hop to Germany, and which previously established a new world's record for sustained flight. It was in a Fokker monoplane that Commander Byrd crossed the North Pole. All three of the planes that lined up on Long Island in May last, preparing to fly to Paris, were monoplanes.

And it was in the smallest of them all, the little Ryan monoplane, that Charlie Lindbergh first flew across.

Yet one of the comments which Lindbergh made about his experiences and observations in Europe was an expression of surprise at the greater development of the monoplane in France.

Lindbergh's plane is but slightly modified from the commercial type of the same make which is regularly used in carrying air mail between Los Angeles and Seattle, via San Francisco. It is wh at is known as a sem­ icantilever monoplan e, with th e wings located above the

fuselage. I n the commercial pl ane of this type, the pilot's seat is directly behind th e wings, while the compartment for mail, express matter or passe ngers is under the wings.

The first change made from the standard design was to fill this cargo space with large tanks to hold the 300 extra gallons of gasoline needed to carry the flyer across the Atlantic; the next, to inclose the pilot's cockpit, putting a roof over his head and an entrance door on the right of the fuselage, with a corresponding window on the left. The three regular tanks, which carry 153 gallons of gas, enough for 500 miles, are located between the wings, over the cargo space, and inside the body of the machine .

The new location of the gas tanks was chosen for two reasons; first, to put all the weight in front of the pilot, so that he would not be crushed between the gas tank and th e engine in case of a crash; the second, to reduce the length of the gas line from tank to engine, thereby lessening the danger of the gas line becoming clogged.

The longest gas line in Lindbergh's plane is barely two feet.

Four hundred and fifty-two gallons of gasoline, the amount with which Lindbergh started off, weighs some­ what more than a ton and a half, instead of the 750 pounds of mail or passengers which the standard Ryan plane is designed to carry. This extra weight necessitated increasing the lifting area of the wings. Further weight was added not only by the enlarged wings but by the necessity of lengthening the standard fuselage, to coun­ terbalance the shifting of weight forward.

So ten feet was added to the length of the wi ngs, giving them a spread of forty-six feet. This, it proved, was sufficient to lift the initial load of 5,150 pounds with wh ich the Spirit of St. Louis started across the Atlantic. As the wings are almost exactly seven feet wide, from front to back, their area is 320 square feet; the lifting capacity of sixteen pounds to the square foot demonstrated on the Paris flight might easily be exceed­ ed, although the design of the wings of Lindbergh's plane is for speed rather than lift.

The rule in airplane construction is "thin wings for speed, thick wings for lift." This plane's wings are only about eight inches through at the thickest point. They are made of spruce ribs shaped to what is known as the "Clark Y" section, held in place by wires, and covered with cotton fabric treated with "dope," a solution of cellulose in acetic acid which stretches the fabric and keeps it taut.

One interesting departure from standard practice in the wings is the location of the ailerons, the "I ittle wings" which operate to control lateral balance, and are hinged to the after edge of the main wing structure, one on each side. When the plane starts to tip to the right, a slight movement of the control lever or "joy stick," swings the right aileron downward and the left one up­ ward. This reduces the wind pressure on the lower side of the left wing and increases it on the corresponding surface of the right wing, bringing the plane back to an even keel . The ailerons, too, enable the flyer to "bank" the machine in turning, and so avoid side-slips. In Lind­ bergh's plane the ailerons, instead of being attached to the wings at the extreme ends, where they are usually placed, are cut in about two feet from the wing tips to increase the rigidity of the wings.

The fuselage, or body, of the plane, is suspended from the wings by wooden struts, streamlined, or shaped to offer the least resistance to the wind, and fastened with steel connections at all joints. Forward of the wings the fuselage is covered with a metal cowl, to protect the working parts of the engine. The fuselage itself is built of seamless steel tubing, covered with stretched fabric sim­ ilar to that used on the wings. The horizontal rudders, or elevators, and the vertical rudder, at the extreme rear of the fuselage, which operates precisely like the rudder of a boat, are of wood covered with fabric. Everything about the fuselage is streamlined, to give the least pos­ sible resistance in flight. The only exceptions are the nine cylinders of the engine, which require air resistance for cooling, the landing wheels, and five projecting tubes.

Three of these projecting tubes, bent at right angles and projecting above the center of the wings, are vents for the gasoline tanks, to prevent accumulation of vapor which might exp lode. Projecting more than two feet for­ ward from the lower surface of the left wing is a slender, forked tube, the Pitot tube which actuates the speed indicator on the aviator's instrument board. And from the top of the fuselage, about a third of the way from the wings to the tail, a four-inch cylinder projects ver­ tically into the air about a foot.

This cylinder is the housing of the driving mechanism of the earth inductor compass, which will be described later. It carries at its upper end a tiny windmill which, at a speed through the air of seventy miles an hour o.r more, generates enough power to run a small dynamo (Cont. on Page 75) concealed inside the fuselage.

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Above: A motorcade through Belize in honor of the First Air Mail, with Col. Lindbergh riding on top of the rear seat. He wears the broad banded felt hat. (Photo courtesy of Giles R. Taggart, Jr.) Below: Col. Lindbergh walking around the S-38 during a pre-flight examination prior to takeoff from Belize.

Above: Col. Lindbergh is greeted by U.S. Consul, Gile~ ..

Taggart, immediately after beaching his aircraft at Belize, ­ Honduras, on February 4, 7929. (Photo courtesy of Giles R. Taggart, Jr.)

By:

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Robert G. Elliott 7227 Oakwood Ave. Daytona Beach, Fla. 32074

Mr. Giles R. Taggart, Jr., semi-retired, of Daytona Beach, Fla., was most generous in providing an opportu­ nity to examine his photo scrapbook not many months ago. Prompting the occasion was the untimely death of Charles A. Lindbergh, and the forthcoming 50th anni­ versary of his Paris flight.

Mr. Taggart had at one time lived with his family in Beli ze, Honduras, where his father was the U.S. Consul.

Shortly after 'Slim' Lindbergh's Atlantic flight, a re­ ception in his honor was held in Washington, D.C. at which time Mr. Taggart Jr., was introduced to the avia­ tion hero. A friendship began, and was renewed two years later when Lindbergh made the first Air Mail flight to Belize.

13

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Left: Composite photograph depicting Lind­ bergh's historic Atlantic flight on May 20, 7927.

An original of this reproduction is the property of this writer, R. G. Elliott.

Above: Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, flying a Sikorsky S-38, landing at Belize, Honduras, Feb­ ruary 4, 7929. (Photo courtesy of Giles R. Tag­ gart, Jr.)

Below: With one engine shut down, Col. Lind­ bergh sits on the forward deck while his com­ panion P.A .A. pilot prepares to shut down the remaining engine.

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The heavy wooden "legs" to which the landing wheels are attached are streamlined, as are the bracing struts which hold them in place. They are hollow for part of their depth, to receive the plungers attached to the independent axles of the wheels. These plungers act on concealed springs when the plane lands; and the wheels themselves are cambered, or set at an angle inclin­ ed inward from the vertical, to prevent undue spreading when alighting or "taxiing" over rough ground.

So much for the plane itself; but a plane is useless without an engine, and the engine of Lindbergh's plane is as up to date as the plane.

In two important particulars this Wright Whirlwind )-5 motor represents an advance over anything which was in general use when the war ended. It is air-cooled, and its nine cylinders are arranged in a circle around a central crank shaft, thus reducing the length and weight of the shaft and crank case. This type of design, in which the cylinders are stationary, is known as a radial engine.

Constant improvements have made this Wright Whirl­ wind the most dependable aviation motor now in use. It is standard equipment on twenty-five or more makes of airplanes. It supplied the motive power for Commander Byrd's flight across the North Pole, and for Chamberlin's flight to Germany in the Bellanca monoplane. And it took Lindbergh more than 3600 miles without missing a stroke in any of its nine cylinders.

As the shortening of the crank shaft and its housing reduces the weight of the engine itself, air-cooling reduces the plane's load still further, by doing away with the radiator and its contained water. Moreover, all dan­ ger of freezing is eliminated.

In Lindbergh's engine the rush of the machine through the air, at from seventy to 135 miles an hour, produces a current of air which is intensified by the back-wash of the propellers, and which carries off the heat generated by the explosions in the cylinders. The cylinders themselves are machined from steel forgings, with external annular or ringlike fins at carefully­ determined distances, to give the largest possible radia­ tion area with the least air resistance. The cylinders have a bore of 4.5 inches and the piston stroke is 5.5 inches, the nine giving a displacement of 788 cubic inches, which produces about 225 horsepower at 1800 revolu­ tions per minute at sea level. At high altitudes the power is reduced.

Lindbergh's engine weighs approximately 508 pounds, equipped and ready for operation, or just over

15

two and a half pounds per horsepower. Lighter engines have been built; Liberties have produced above 500 horsepower with an engine weight of 880 pounds. But there was the additional weight of the watercooling system to be added, so that in practice Lindbergh's en­ gine is about as light as any which have proved able to stand the strain of continuous flight.

The outside diameter of the engine is forty-five inches; its length from the front of the propeller hub to the point of attachment with the fuselage is only twenty-seven and one half inches, though the housing of the crank case projects six and one half inches farther back. An ir;1genious triple-action carburetor, with three barrels supplied by a common float, feeds gasoline to the cylinders through three three-way manifolds, each serv­ ing three cylinders. The exhaust manifold is circular and leads down to a point directly below the forward end of the fuselage. All of the working parts of the engine except the pistons are machined from special alloy steels; the pistons are of cast iron. The crank shaft is mounted on ball bearings. Ignition is by a dual magneto system.

That is the engine which pulled Lindbergh and his plane 3647 miles, from New York to Paris, in a singl e flight, in 33 V2 hours, an average of 108.7 miles an hour, on 432 gallons of gasoline and 11.8 gallons of oil. That figures out a gasoline consumption of 12.9 gallons an hour, or about 8.4 miles to the gallon, a record which would rejoice the heart of many a driver of a high­ powered automobile. And the oil consumption is even more remarkable, 309 miles to the gallon, or more than seventy-seven miles on a quart of oi I. The average speed of the engine, Lindbergh reported, was 1600 revolutions per minute.

To drive this engine, keep this plane in equilibrium in the air, and find his way across the trackless ocean, Lind­ bergh had at his command a collection of controls and instruments, most of them common to all airplanes, but two, at least, as unfamiliar to the ordinary groundling as they are to most airmen. Those two are the earth induc­ tor compass and the periscope.

Fixed in the little window over his head, which gave him light and ventilation, Lindbergh had a magnetic compass; but the magnetic compass alone is of little use in the air .. Not only does its successful use require an exact knowledge of the navigator's position and the var­ iation of the needle from the true north to be expected in that latitude and longitude, but its needle, in flight, is

Above: First model of the earth inductor compass, the invention of Maurice M. Titterington (left), which enabled Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis to reach the Irish coast at a point only three miles from the planned course.

_<p/ Above, Lindbergh's speed timer. At right, speed and drift meter whjch enabled him to calculate angle of drift and speed. At extreme right, the indicator of the earth inductor compass. All the way across, Lind­ bergh watched the little hand on the dial, which told him of any deviation from his course.

never co nstant to the pole.

The earth inductor compass, invented within the last fiv e years by Maurice M. Titterington, chief engineer of th e Pion eer In strument Company of Broo kl yn, is the latest and most useful of all the aids to aer ial navigation.

Its principl e is based upon the fact th a t the earth's rev­ olutions in space ge nerate electro magnetic lines of force which flow in a north-and-south direction, from pol e to po le. Th e earth is, in short, a huge electro magnet .

As every student of electr icity knows, a dynamo consists of a coil of wire, or armature, rotated at right angles to the lines of force of an electromagnet, or field.

It follows, th en, th at if a co il of wire is rotated rapidly enough at the proper angle to th e earth's magn et ic field it will beco me a dynamo and generate current. This cur­ rent will flow through th e coi l in th e same relation to its pol es as does th e mag net ic current in th e field, and it can be taken off from th e armature pol es by mea ns of brushes and led through wires to perform wh atever work it is ca pabl e of.

An interesting fac t not often re membered is that th e a ngle at which the brush es make contact with the ar­ mat ure poles determines the potentia l of the transmitted cur rent. And thi s is the fact on which the earth inductor compass is based.

Below the little windmill sticking out of the fuselage, al ready referred to , is a small armature, revolving on a vertical axis and hung on gi mbals so that it is always at right angles to th e earth's magnetic field. The littl e wind­ mill supplies th e power to keep it rotating. Th e very faint curre nt tak en off from this ti ny dynamo, of which the earth itself is the fie ld, is carried to a galvano meter or indicator mounted on the instrument board in front of the pil ot. Wh en the brushes are set so that no current whatever is being taken off the generator, the galva nom­ eter needle points to zero.

In Lindbergh's machine the brushes are set so that the highest outp ut of the generator is obtained when the brushes are respectively north and so uth of the ar matu re poles, and the pote ntial is zero when the brushes are east and west.

Now, to fi nd out th e direction in which he was flying, Lindbergh had recourse to the third element of the combination of devices which make up the inductor compass- the co ntroll er. This is a dial set horizo ntall y near hi s right hand , with a little crank projecting fro m its center and an indi cator needle faste ned to the rim of the case. On the dial are marked the points of the co mpass,

with figures correspondin g to those on the galva nometer, north being indicated by ze ro. This dial is mechanically connected with the ge nerator brushes, by a flex ibl e shaft.

The aviator turns the crank of the dial, rotating th e brushes upon the poles of the ar mature. The littl e gal­ va nometer needle creeps bac k to ze ro as the brushes reach the east-and-west positio n. Bu t the dial has moved, with the crank, precisely the s~me number of degrees and minutes as th e brush es themse lves have moved, and the indicator on the dial points to the exact point of th e compass toward which the plane is heading.

It sounds com pli cated, but is o ne of the si mpl est devices possible, and its accuracy is far greater than that of a magnetic compass. Its variation is seldom more than three or four minutes of circumference from accuracy.

Small wonder th at every time Lindbergh spoke of hi s plan e he praised thi s compass which enabled him to cross the coast of Ireland within three miles of th e point at which he had ai med.

Th e other innovation used by Lindbergh to aid him in hi s flight, and one which excited the derision of many airmen - before the flight - is the periscope. This is simpl icity itself. Imagin e two meta l boxes, each about th e size of a common bri ck thou gh somewhat longer , each ope n at o ne end so they will telesco pe one over the other. Now set a mirror at an angle of forty-five degrees in the end of eac h part, cut an opening opposite th e mirror, slid e the two parts together so that one mirror faces forward and the other backward, an d you have th e essentials of Lindbergh's periscope. It is faste ned to the upper left corner of the instrument board of the Spirit of St. Louis, so that the aviator can look at one mirror and see there the reflection of whatever is reflected up on the other mirror, when the outer end of the per iscope is extended beyond the side of the pl ane. Th at is all th ere is to it. It was added to the plane as an afterthought , when it was realized that the inclosed cockpit would give the aviator no opportunity to see ahead of him. Crossing the ocean that made littl e difference, but over land, and especial ly in landing, abi li ty to look ahead was impor­ tant.

The rest of the ap paratus in the cockpit of Lind ­ bergh's pl ane is part of every air man's eq uipm ent. Chi ef of the controls is the "joy stick," the lever which co ntro ls the ailero ns and the elevators. Pull the joy stick backward and the elevators at the tail of the pl ane turn upward, the machine rises; pu sh it forward and the

descent begins. Move the joy stick to th e right and it simultaneously depresses th e left ai leron and lifts the right one, banking the plane to th e right. A perfectly­ balanced pl ane will fly in a straight horizo ntal line, except for wind drift, without the pilofs hand l,Ipon the joy stick. Constant consumption of gaso line, reducing the head load and so changin g the balance, made it nec­ essary to equip the Spirit of St. Louis with a dev ice whereby the elevatocs could be held in a slightly deflect­ ed position, which could be changed from time to time, in order to let Lindbergh take his hand off the joy stick long enough to set his co mp ass control, eat a sandwich, mark his chart or make entries in hi s log. Thi s device is a lever just und er the instrument board, at the pilot's left, which can be locked into anyo ne of a dozen po sitions, much as the emergency brake of an autom obi le is lock­ ed. A third lever in the littl e cabin, close to Lindb ergh's left hand, is the gasoline throttle, controlling the engi ne speed. And und er hi s feet is the rudd er bar; a pressure of the right foot moves the rudder to the right and turns the pl ane horizo ntally in that direction, and vice versa .

In fro nt of the pilot, below the instrument board, are cocks for tapping t he gaso line tanks as required. On the instrument board , in addition to the periscope and compass indicator, the clock, engine prim er, lever for controlling the gas mixture at th e carburetor, ignition switch and oil pressure gage, which are similar to those used in automobiles, the essentiall y aviation -indicating devices are a tachometer, an incl inometer, a bank and turn indicator, an air speed indicator and an alti meter.

Lindbergh told the reporters in Paris that he rose to a height of ten thousand feet to get above a sleet storm, which threatened to bring him- down because of the weight on his wings. How did he know he went up ten thousand feet? Th e altimeter is-the instrument that tells the story of height. It is an aneroi d barometer, th e prin­ ci pl e of which is th at if you exhaust most of the air from a thin metal box with flexible and corrugated sides, then seal the box, every change in air pressure on the outside of the box will cause th e sides to bulge outward, if the air pressure is reduced, or to bulge inward if it is increas­ ed. By connecting the sides of th e box with a deli cately adjusted needl e indicator, the change of air pressure from one elevation to another may be indicated.

Th e sealed barograph which Lindb ergh took with him to provide indisputable proof that no landing wa s made between New York and Paris, is merely an aneroid baro meter co nnected with a clockwork mechanism

16

which records on a strip of paper every change in bar­ ometric pressure and therefore every change in altitude over a given period of time.

An interesting application of a principle discovered more than two hundred years ago by the French philos­ opher Pitot is the air speed indicator. Pitot found that if one arm of an L-shaped tube was placed horizontally in a stream of water, the height of the water in the vertical part would increase in a certain ratio to the speed of the flow. The same is true in a current of air, the pressure in a tube around which an air current is flowing; increasing in proportion to the speed of the air current. So the straight end of the long Pitot tube which projects for­ ward from under the plane's left wing, far enough for­ ward to be out of the propeller's blast, is exposed to a current of air whose speed is precisely that of the plane itself as it rushes through the air. Midway between this opening and the tube's other end is a flexible diaphragm which moves with the increase or decrease of pressure, and actuates · the dial in front of the aviator wh ich in­ dicates his speed through the air in miles per hour.

The other device to aid the pilot in determining his speed is the tachometer, which operates like the speedometer of a car, except that it shows engine revolu­ tions per minute instead of miles per hour. Eighteen hundred a minute was the maximum reached by Lind­ bergh's engine, when he was climbing out of the sleet storm off Newfoundland.

The remaining two instruments on the board the inclinometer and the bank and turn indicator, complete the pilot's information . The inclinometer tells whether he is ascending or descending; also whether he is tilting to the right or left. It is a highly necessary instrument for night flying, when no horizon is visible; for it is a curious fact that airmen are unable, under such condi­ tions, to tell by their own senses whether they are right side up. The inclinometer works on the principle of a spirit level. A horizontal tube of an alcohol and glycerine mixture contains a bubble that shows by its position whether the plane is tilted sideways. Below it on the instrument board is visible one arm of a liquid filled U-tube . The liquid level, changing with each dip or up­ ward tilt of the plane, shows the fore-and-aft inclination from the horizontal. The bank and turn indicator, like the first of the inclinometers, shows whether the plane is flying on an even keel by means of a spirit level - and it still registers zero, its central position, when the pilot

17

PERISCOPE

INSTRUMENT SOARD

AIR

VENTS

/')

,

':":S ~~AILERON

COMPASS INDUCTOR COMPASS GENERATOR

LIFE

RAFT

FOOD COMPARTMENT

RACK FO'R ACCESSORIES

TAIL SKID

STORAGE SPACE

Above: The design and equipment of the Spirit of St. Louis.

This broken-away view reveals the mechanical features of Lindbergh's monoplane that embody the last word in airplane construction. The machine is only slightly modified from com­ mercial planes of the same make. Notice particularly the loca­ tion of the gas tanks in front of the pilot's cockpit.

banks at the correct slant to distribute the combined strain of centrifugal force and gravity evenly over the plane's wings. Its turning indicator, an application of the gyroscope, tells the airman flying over unmarked spaces, like the prairie or the sea, whether his machine is turning to right or left without tilting.

The sensitive element of the turn indicating mech­ anism is a small air-driven gyroscope, operated by the pressure obtained from a venturi tube. A venturi tube is one constricted at some point in its length and tapering or flaring outward in both directions. It serves to inten­ sify a low pressure of any fluid passing through it to a much higher pressure at the point of constriction.

Through the venturi tube a powerful stream of air sets the little gyroscope revolving. Once it is set spinning, it will continue to rotate in a given plane so long as the

motive power persists and regardless of any change in position of its supporting structure. So the little gyro­ scope inside of the turn indicator keeps merrily on its straight-ahead way, no matter how much the plane may veer to the right or the left, and the indicator on the turn dial stays right .along with its parent gyro, telling the aviator instantly whether he is steering a straight course or not.

Is it any wonder that Lindbergh said "We"? Almost as complex as his own human structure, many times more sensitive in many respects, as delicate as a woman yet stronger than the strongest man, with powers of endurance and resistance which humanity hasllever even approached, the Spirit of St. Louis carried him through space with uncanny precision and terrific speed. How can he help feeling that his plane is a friend, a comrade, a personality? ~

'"

What Lindbergh Found

Ey FITZHUGH GREEN

Offers of Millions, Offers of Marriage and 14,000 Gifts in Packages Sent to Atlantic Flyer

•

tn His Mail Bag

Through the crowded events that followed the great flight to Paris, the author of this article was one of Col. Lindbergh's chief aides. And in the swift preparation of Lindbergh's book "We," he wrote several chapters describing the welcoming receptions which the modest aviator did not wish to write himself. Commander Green also aided in handling Lindbergh's huge mail.

"Dear Lindy-" Those two words, with variations, have been written more than three and a half million times in the last four months by peopl e of all races, colors and climes.

No one man in history ever received such a mountain of mail as has Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh since that memorable May 21 when he completed his lon e flight from New York to Paris by plane. Between that day and June 17, when he landed in St. Louis after an unprec­ edented welcome by mankind, there came to him, from every corner of the globe, more than 3,500,000 letters, 100,000 telegrams and cablegrams of congratulation and 14,000 parcel post packages containing gifts, samples, and articles for trade!

And even now, nearly four months after the world first went mad over his magnificent feat, scores of sec­ retaries and postal clerks are still busy sorting and clas­ sifying the great piles of communications to the young aviator, whose daily mail continues to be greater than most of us receive in a month.

If we should suddenly find ourselves in Lindbergh's place, the recipients of millions of messages, gifts and pleas from young and old, the fortunate and the mis­ erable of almost every race and nationality, what should we do about it? How should we feel and act?

Because I have chanced to be one of many to assist in

the giga nti c task of doing at least so methi ng about the kindly millions who sent their congratulations and gifts, perhaps I can help you put yourself for a moment in Lindb ergh's pl ace.

I know that when the first great bulk of cablegrams and letters arr ived for " Slim " at the American Embassy in Paris, he was deeply touched and profoundly interest­ ed. He was thrilled that thousands upon thousands whose names were strange to him , and whose faces he had never seen, should thus shower him with perso nal tributes. And hi s first impulse was to read every letter, and answer each in turn with his own hand.

But that first impulse soon changed to something like bewilderment when, on the second day after his arrival in Paris, a large r00m had to be commandeered for the first of this mail, and Ambassador Herrick assigned eight of his own staff to handle the correspondence. By the second night another tidal wave of cables, sweeping in from America, swamped the secretarial force, which by that time had been trebled. Even while the secretaries toiled far into the night, they gave up all hope of answer­ ing each missive in the sea of white and yellow en­ velopes.

Not so Lindbergh. When, later, the deluge was repeat­ ed in varying degrees in Brussels, London and Cher­ bourg, he never quite gave up the idea of eventually completing the appalling task of answering unseen mil­ lions who spoke to him.

The simply worded messages from mothers who pour­ ed out their hearts in joy at his safe landing- the letters in the trembling hand of old age, or in the faltering form of the very young-those other jubilant congratulations from rulers, presidents, scientists, educators, busi­ nessmen, soldiers, sailors, clerks, street cleaners, even tramps and beggars- all these voices seemed to hold him duty bound, the while they overwhelmed him.

Only when he reached America, and received the full volume of the welcome home, was he at last compelled to throw up his hands in despair. In Washington three

Above: You too would scratch your head if you had flown across the Atlantic and your congrat­ ulatory mail mounted to so many tons that it would take you J50 years to answer all of the messages.

1E

mail trucks brought him letters that had collected during your mother and for us." Such was the gist of thousands his passage home on the U.s.s. Memphis. A huge West­ upon thousands of messages from American fathers and ern Union bus with ten messengers carried the telegrams mothers for him. Ten one-ton trucks could not have transported Not a few communications were amusing for the all the parcel post intended for his hand! In New York "five-dollar" words they contained. On e began: "Fair­ scores of aides, clerks and stenographers struggled in vain haired Apollo, your meteoric traverse of the sea, your transcend ant victory over boundless space, shall thunder to keep pace with the ever rising tide.

Yet, withal, it required some argum ent to convince down the avenues of time!"- And so on for several the boy that personal acknowledgment would be beyond resounding pages of closely written foolscap.

Requests for help came next. There were entreaties the power of any man.

It was pointed out to him that a high speed business based on purported old friendship, on relationship, on' executive with a force of expert stenographers might past favors, and on the utter poverty of the writers. average 200 replies a day. At that rate he might clean up I believe there was not a single man or woman of the Lindbergh's stack of mail in about seventy years! Only, hundreds that worked on Lindbergh's mail who did not before he could finish two thirds of it, he'd be dead of shed many tears. So plainly grievous were many cases that it shocked us, as I know it would have shocked old age!

Moreover, Lindbergh was reminded of the fact that Lindbergh, to realize there was such abject misery in this he knows neither how to dictate nor to typewrite. He rich country of ours.

A widow wrote that she had been bedridden for writes everything-even his book - in longhand. If he should work at top speed on the letters every day, he'd eighteen years. "A little money will do," she urged, have the job done in about 150 years. The letterheads "maybe ten or fifteen dollars. That will give me a chance alone in this mail of his, if placed end to end, would to get new curtains for the room in which I have lain for stretch from New York to Denver. Stack all this mail in so many years."

Sick people, the financially down and out, struggling a single pile, and it would reach 10,000 feet into the sky, widows, orphans, a wife who had left her husband and nearly to the height of Pikes Peak!

So, in the end, although in St. Louis a force of fifteen was trying to earn an independent living, the discontent­ secretaries of the Chamber of Commerce did manage in ed daughter who had sought her fortune in the city and six weeks to acknowledge 200,000 letters addressed to found only discouragement and failure - thousands of him there, Colonel Lindbergh has had for the most part these unhappy people felt called upon to lay their cases to content himself with the hope that his unanswered before the young man who flew to Paris.

Some requests for help were more entertaining than friends will see his predicament and understand.

Perhaps, after all, it is well that this is so. I have read heart-rending. Th e owner of a small-town garage wrote hundreds of the letters which Lindbergh himself never that he had been having trouble with valves and consid­ has had opportunity to see. Many of them would tear at ered Lindb ergh "just the fellow to help me out." his heart strings. While some offer opportunities for "I have ground the valves with carborundum dust and wealth beyond the dreams of most men, others would on a stone," he said, "b ut they seem to leak. I want to tug at his purse strings. If he should respond to a small know what you think about this. You seem to know portion of the pitiful appeals for help contained he your engines pretty well. Or else you would have broken would soon be impoverished. While he would be glad­ them down long ago. It may be that I am not doing the dened by the sincere generosity of everyday people, he job thoroughly enough. You see I have had a good deal would be saddened, too, by the avarice, treachery and of trouble lately. We live with my wife's mother. She bothers Minnie (my wife) a little, especial ly in the eve­ deceit which my eyes so often read between the lines.

What a revelation of human character there! nings. So next morning I 'haven't got my mind on the The largest number, of course, were letters of job.

"Better write me direct to the shop, and don't men­ congratulation. Most of these were couched in the simple, kindly language of home folks. I pick up one at tion the mother-in-law. What I want is advice on valves."

Th e letters were in every conceivable form. More random and read : "Dear Colonel Lindbergh: Oh, we are so happy you got there. May God bless and keep you for were in longhand than in type; more in pencil than ink;

19

more from small towns than from cities or country.

More came from women than from men. Nearly as many came from youths as from adults. Girls wrote more than boys in ratio of about four to one. Most writers put in their addresses; many, their photographs.

One person out of five sent some sort of newspaper clipping. Nearly one letter in twenty contained a poem about Lindbergh or dedicated to him. More than 5,000 Lindbergh poems were written in all. About $10,000 of return postage was received, and there was also some cash. More than 400 Lindberghs had written to Slim by the time he reached New York, claiming close rela­ tionship and as king if he couldn't do something for them now that he was the outstanding member of the family.

Next in number to the appeals for help came the business offers. I doubt if Lindbergh will ever know the extent of the promised fortunes of those offers. A conservative estimate by a well-known banker is $6,000,000.

More than half this amount was covered in perfectly feasible moving picture contracts. One company offered him about $500,000 if he would put in a few days doing the star part in a picture that would represent American home life. Another wanted him to do an air thriller in twelve releases at $40,000 a release. Still another offered him $100,000 to appear in a film in which he would actually be married, the stipulation being that there be close-ups of his face when he first met the girl that appea led to him, and at the moment he was pronounced her husband. For this unique pictorial study of emotion it was said he would receive $1,000,000.

The most amazing offer he received in Europe was of $2,500,000 for a flig ht alone around the world. Perhaps the easiest money he could have made was a proposition which involved about forty minutes of his time. He was to get $240,000 if he would stand in front of a camera which registered both voice and picture and read his own first account of the flight across the Atlantic as publish­ ed in the press. He could have made abo ut $300,000 by letting a talking machine concern make a record of his story in his own voice, the reading to be bracketed by the Marseillaise and the Star Spangled Banner pl ayed by a big orchestra.

Lindb ergh knew of most of these entici ng offers, but in every case he declined them graciously but firmly. He seemed determined not on ly to devote himself to his chosen calling of aviation, but jealously to guard against the danger of cheapening either himself or the achieve­

f

Above: Postmaster General, checking part of Lindb ergh's Washington mail.

ment for which the world had honored him.

In his mail were countless smaller offers of whicr he never knew. Typical among them was an invitation to become a partner in the operation of a chain of small stores. As a special inducem ent the man who made the offer agreed to let Lindbergh use his name on the store windows! "You will find me a good fellow to deal with," the man wrote as an added attraction, "I don 't get angry very often, and when I do I usually go away, so will not fight."

Next in order of their numbers came "mash notes."

These were to be expected. Lindbergh is young, and famous, and good looking. He doesn't drink nor smoke nor dissipate. He is full of health . Though he resisted all business offers save his book and his story in the news­ papers just after his arrival in Paris, this money with the $25,000 Orteig prize which he won, has given him a comfortable fortune.

Many has been the match made by a chance letter.

Youth is full of romance. Why shouldn't the girls have written Charlie how they felt? Most of us who had a chance to read the letters were impressed by their sincer­ ity and decency. There wasn't the cheapness about them that one might expect in the circumsta nces.

"I like yeur looks and believe you would like me"­ "We might hit it off; who can tell?"- "I believe if you and I came to like one another we might be just suited" - "Excuse me for writing, and I shall expect to hear from you when you reach town." Frank and straightfor­ ward were most of the messages, written by wholesome girls to a wholesom e young man.

How did Slim feel about them? How does he regard the flood of love notes and proposals of marriage? Well, he never has said. Whenever the letters have been men­ tioned, he always has smiled his famous smile- and changed the subject. I fear, though, that the thousands of lovely young women - and elderly ones, too- who lost their hearts to him, remain among the vast throng of unanswered admirers.

Of all the letters, however, the most interesting to

me- and I know they would have appealed to Lindbergh - were the ones that told about new inventions. True, many of them made wild claims that never could be substantiated; many were from obvious cranks; and many talked more about the millions of dollars promised in quick profits than about the practicability of the ar­ ticle. But the majority of them were of real and specific interest, and showed promise in those who wrote them.

I think these inventions thrilled many of us who were working on the Lindbergh mail, because they indicated what terrific and countrywide energy is daily devoted to mechanical development. If only one thousandth of the inventions proposed to Lindbergh ultimately turn out to be useful, transportation, communication, industry and hygiene in America will be revolutionized in the next five years!

Prominent among the creations which inventors described to Slim applied to aviation. Hundreds of young men proposed devices for stabilizing an airplane so that it could not upset in flight. Most of them had developed some new form of wing or automatic control to make an accident al most impossible. Surely this shows how intense is the effort to bring about safe fly­ ing. Many sketches for new kinds of parachutes were submitted; parachutes for the plane as well as for pilot and passengers.

One mechanical genius wrote: "When you come to my town I want to show you an engine I have built that will run for twenty-four hours on a gallon of fuel, and run strongly enough to pull your Spirit of St. Louis at twice the speed you made across the Atlantic." He only hinted at the chemistry of his marvelous fuel and the mechanics of his super-engine.

Then there were inventions that had nothing remote­ ly to do with Lindbergh or aviation. The fact that the flyer had been so resourceful and successful seemed to indicate that his genius might be applied in almost any line. Slim is scarcely a horseman, yet a retired mariner wrote asking him to join forces in a device to prevent horses from running away by the simple method of fix­ ing a boat davit to the car or carriage, by mean s of which the runaway animal could be hoisted off the ground during the period of his frenzy!

Innumerab le letters contained proposals for improv­ ing radio. Chief among these were ideas for television, distant radio control, power transmission by radio, and airship guidance with radio waves.

A large number contained requests for aid in perfect­

ing "sure fire" perpetual motion machines.

A college professor wrote that he thought Lindbergh might be interested in helping him perfect a gun which would sink any battleship in the world with one shot.

I read at least three proposals that Lindbergh join in an attempt to reach the moon by a rocket shot from the earth. There was one plan to communicate with Mars.

Other plans outlined to the flyer were for making gold from sea water and diamonds from carbon, and for find­ ing buried treasure.

A "biologist" very seriously solicited Lindbergh 's interest in a scheme for grafting wings on monkeys until the method was successful enough to tryon a man.

"And I know of no better person," the writer earnestly went on, "than yourself for the first human experiment.

If you will sit down and talk with me you will see that the idea is not nearly so fantastic as it sounds."

I think that would appeal to Slim more than any of the others!

There were not a few vague but palpably dishonest schemes for getting rich quick. One was "a brand-new counterfeiting device which is absolutely secret, Colonel Lindb ergh , and will turn out real ten-dollar bills quicker than the eye can follow!"

An extraordinary number of letters offered help to Lindbergh. Many people apparently believed he would at once settle down, build a house, get married and have children. This meant he would need furniture, bank accounts, groceries, clothing, cradles, carpets, books, medicines, and goodness knows what. Thousands offered to supply him these arti cles at reasonable prices, in some cas,es free, provided he would let his name be used as a client of the manufacturer or retailer.

Thus his mass of parcel post included every sort of article from safety razors to spare tires, most of which were sent with the hope he would endorse them. There were many gifts, too; such as cakes, hats, jewelry, hand­ kerchiefs, ties and candy.

A number of private gymnasiums and physical instructors wrote eloquently about the strain he would be under and suggested courses of exercises, some free, some at varying costs.

It would take volumes to tell all that I saw in Lind­ bergh's mail. The things I have outlined briefly here represent mere ly a cross section of what will long be the greatest postal wonder in modern times, the finest exam­ ple of mass appreciation of a great feat by a splendid ~ youth. --r:; 20

Tracking the 'lost' barnstorming pal of 'Slim' Lindbergh Leon Klink, at 79, remembers sharing carefree life of an itinerant aviator

..

before Lindbergh flew to Paris and fame

.~ ...", ~ The world remembers Charles Augustus Lindbergh as a cool precision pilot who - 50 years ago next May- flew solo from Roosevelt Field to Paris and hit Le Bourget airport right on the button. It does not remember him as a harum-scarum barnstorming boy aviator who cavorted on airplane wings and who had a penchant for cracking up practically everythi ng he flew in the mid-1920s. (And when his survival possibly earned him the nickname " Lucky Lindy.") And it certainly does not remember at all the name of Leon Klink, one of Lindy's flying part­ ners in the days before the aluminum-cowled Spirit of St. Louis skimmed across the Atlantic at nearly 110 miles per hour.

Yet there was something about this Klink that excit­ ed my interest a year or so ago when I reread We, the book that was rushed into print two months after that first, nonstop ocean crossing of 1927. The man was a young Midwest automobile dealer. He had bought a Curtiss JN4-Canadian biplane, commonly known as a Can uck, for $750, and Lindbergh was to give him instruction. They had in mind a pl easu re trip through the South, then decid ed to go on to the Pacific Coast and back, "barnstorming only enough," Lindbergh wrote, "to make current expenses if possible."

Barnstorming meant taking locals aloft for brief flights over their villages, for $5 each. Klink needed the experience; Lindy was just passing the time while wait­

21

Above: A passing sailor used Klink's camera to take this snapshot of Klink (left) and Lindbergh, the latter in his trademark stance, posing in front of a Navy flying boat on an Atlantic beach. ing to hear whether he had passed the exams to enter The closing words of Chapter Four in We indicated Brooks Field at San Antonio as a flying cadet. Both that Klink took off alone in his Canuck for California needed the money. from Stinson Field, San Antonio, in mid-March 1924. So Time ran out, thanks to various crashes. "I t was too I began my search for KI ink at Stinson. No one recalled near the 15th of March to continue west," Lindbergh ever hearing of Lindbergh's being there with Klink and wrote, "so we decided to take the Canuck back to San his Canuck. No records were kept in 1924; in fact, Antonio where we would finish off the repairs and Klink neither aviators nor airplanes were required to be reg­ would continue on to California alone." istered or licensed back then.

So far as We were, or was, concerned, that was the Th e Canuck was the Canadian version of the Curtiss end of Leon Klink. Did he, a novice pilot, ever get to JN3 ".J enny" World War I trainer. For some reason the California? And get back? And whatever happened to design included a leak-prone water pump above the car­ him, if not sudden death, while all those thinks were buretor air intake. Flyers joked about the water pump happening to Lindbergh? Once I got curio us about the man and his fate, it became an obsession. I began to try to track him and his story down. Whatever I discovered, By: Jack Keasler I felt, might add a new dimension to Lindbergh as a 234 E. LuI/wood person. Ultimately the quest was successful - Klink was San Antonio, Texas 78272 alive and well, then 78, minding his own business, right Copyright 7976 Smithsonian Institution from in hi s own backyard, which was St. Louis-b ut along the SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE MA Y 79 76 way to him I often felt like a frustrated Mr. Keane, tracer of lost persons.

and the Curtiss OX-5 engine being two of the "108 reasons why a Canuck will set you down anywhere, any­ time, without warning."

What happened to Klink on his first day out from Stinson? By phone I talked with people as far west as Del Rio, some 170 miles from San Antionio on the Southern Pacific railroad - the S.P. track th en being the "iron compass" that aviators could follow to and from the West. Nobody remembered Klink. Some oldtimers recalled Cal Rodgers passing through in 1911, to be the first aviator to fly coast-to-coast. (His "Vin Fiz" is in the Smithsonian's new National Air and Space Museum, where the Spirit of St. Louis also will be on display starting July 4).

Had a leaking water pump or other engine malfunc­ tion set Klink down in an isolated canyon or mesquite thicket? A story goes that hunters once parked their car in a thicket where it was lost for 17 years. The same th ing cou Id happen to a plane.

The Texas Rangers are famous for finding people ­ not all of them like Sam Bass, the bank robber, or Bonnie and Clyde- but also decent folks who need to be located. I wrote to ask if their records could shed any light on Klink.

While awaiting a reply from the Texas Rangers, I scanned 1924 newspapers, with little luck. There was a brief story about four U.s.Army planes leaving Califor­ nia to attempt a flight around the world. But there was also this news item in a February 12, 1924, St. Louis paper:

The "instructor" was Lindbergh. Ht! was less known then in St. Louis than the 27-year-old Klink, a dynamic, successful used-car dealer. The omission of Lindbergh's name was not Klink's doing. He had mailed the paper a penny postal from Pensacola and the paper wrote the story.

The Texas Rangers responded promptly. "We regret we are unable to find records of a plane crash in 1924 involving Klink."

I recalled that Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater had been flying since 1929. I wrote to him, and asked him if he knew aviation people who might give me a lead on Klink. Senator Goldwater wrote that he was putting me in touch with a pilot who was an excellent historian, and that this pilot knew another pilot's widow who remem­ bered "everything almost back to the Wright brothers."

Soon I had a letter from Mrs. Ruth Reinhold of Phoenix, a member of the transportation board of the Arizona Department of Transportation. Once she had helped Barry Goldwater. He had built up about 200 hours of flying time but had allowed his private license to expire. In 1939 Mrs. Reinhold, then a flight instruc­ tor, gave him a refresher course for a commerical license.

She also taught his brother Bob and his sister and sister­ in-law to fly. Mrs. Reinhold was Goldwater's pilot for several years, starting in 1962. Now she wrote me: "Klink has me bugged. We'll find him!"

A faint clue turned up. Mrs. Lola Mayse of Phoenix, widow of a part-Cherokee Indian pilot who in 31 years of flying piled up a total of about 24,000 hours of fJyi ng without injury to himself or a passenger, has been a friend of Barry Goldwater and Mrs. Reinhold for many years. When Mrs. Reinhold told Mrs. Mayse about the search for Klink, Mrs. Mayse said, "It seems I remember my husband talking about Klink. The name Klink rings bells. Let me think about it."

Mrs. Mayse, who had been a pretty young school­ teacher at Safford, and had married a smi ling, thin-as-a­ rail barnstorming aviator named Charles W. Mayse, who flew in from EI Paso in 1922, was the first of all the people I talked with who seemed to remember Klink.

Through various state governors I requested a search of vital statistics records, offering to pay if need be. The responses were prompt; there was immediate action in the search for Klink.

So now, figuratively speaking, I had riding with me, in the search for Klink, what someone termed "The Lost Aviator Posse." They included Governors Raul Castro of Arizona, Edmund G. Brown J r. of California, Jerry Apodaca of New Mexico, Christopher S. Bond of Missouri (Klink's home state) and Dolph Briscoe of Texas, plus Senator Goldwater, various state police departments, museums, historical societies, retired old­ time aviators and others.

Lindbergh taken by Klink at Camp Wood, where a hotel sheet patched up Canuck's wing fabric.

Klink snapped by Lindbergh, on a barnstorming stop the pair made at Friar Point, Mississippi.

KLINK MAKING

CROSS-COUNTRY

AIRPLANE FLIGHT

Leon A. Klink, automobile dealer at 3435 Juniata Street, is dodging the cold weather in this section by making a fl ying trip to Florida, California and other warm sections of the county.

Klink recently purchased an airplane, and with an instructor departed for a flying trip , headed south .... He states that he will go from Florida to California ... . before returning to St. Louis.

22

The Canuck bashed in the side of hardware store in Camp Wood when Slim, taking off in a street, failed to miss a utility pole.

Lindberg called Klink "Lee," and Klink, like others, c.alled Lindbergh "Slim." They set out from St. Louis in January 1924, to barnstorm the South in Klink's Canuck, and their trail from Missouri to Florida is easy to follow. In Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi are elderly people who once paid $5 for a short hop, with Lindbergh at the controls.

From Florida to Texas the trail left by Slim and Lee is a wake of shattered propellers, ripped and torn fabric, broken wing spars, caved-in wheels and splintered landing-gea,r struts. They reached San Antonio in Feb­ ruary 1924, a month ahead of Lindbergh's induction date into the U.s. Air Service. They decided to fly on to California in Klink's Canuck, using that "iron compass" of the 1,434-mile Southern Pacific tracks from the Alamo City to the West Coast. When Klink had asked his buddy, "Do you think we can get across the moun­ tains?" Lindbergh had said, "It won't do any harm to try. The mountains are lowest in the south, and we can hit the pa~ses."

It should be noted that Canucks (and all Jennies) spoke a language that mesmerized pilots. Canuck "talk" was a combination of sounds: the OX-5 engine rumbling, clattering and popping as it turned at about 1,250 rpm cruise speed, the beat of the propeller flailing the air, the shrill singing of the wind in the some 250 feet of exposed wire rigging, and the assorted vibrations and rhythmic rattles of the airplane.

When they set out to follow the S.P. rails west, Slim may have been listening to the Canuck "talking," because he didn't pay attention to time in the air, mistook the Nueces River for the Rio Grande, and

23

became lost. The day's flying ended with Slim landing the Canuck on a street in the small Southwest Texas town of Camp Wood.

Two days later he tried to take off down a side street, having to steer the Canuck's 43-foot, 7 Yz-inch wingspan between two telephone poles 46 feet apart. As Lind­ bergh recalled it in The Spirit of St. LouiS, "I thought I was rolling precisely along the center of the street, but I failed by three inches to clear the right-hand telephone pole. I jerked the throttle shut, but it was too late. The pole held my wing, while . . . momentum carried the fuselage around and poked its nose right through the board wall of a hardware store."

A great racket ensued as pots, pans, skillets, washtubs and pitchforks tumbled to the floor. This was followed by a delayed thump when the portrait of Cal Coolidge fell from the wall of the post office in a nearby store.

Slim and Lee offered to pay for repairs, but Warren Puett, the hardware merchant, refused the offer. The advertising value, he said, was worth the cost of repairs to his store.

Slim and Lee slept in Mr. A. L. Fitzgerald's hotel. The story goes at Camp Wood that Slim told Mr. Fitzgerald he was going to swipe a bed sheet to patch holes in the Canuck, but Fitzgerald said, "For goodness' sake, Slim, steal a clean one! I don't want that airyplane flyin' around covered with a dirty sheet."

When the Canuck was repaired (it flew slightly side­ ways), Slim took the Fitzgeralds and others up for rides to repay them for their kindness. Then Slim and Lee again headed for California. They might have made it except for a Spanish bayonet plant the Canuck couldn't clime over on takeoff after a landing near Maxon, Texas.

The plane broke a wing spar. While Lee road a freight to EI Paso to get repair parts, Slim stayed with the Canuck and lived with a rancher.

But by now they were out of time. When the wing was repaired they flew the Canuck back to San Antonio, where Lindbergh soon would become an air cadet, and where Klink would set out alone in the battered Canuck for the trip to California. That was where Klink's trail had ended.

At last, on Friday the 13th of June 1975, just 71 days after I began my search for Klink, clues unearthed by "The Lost Aviator Posse" enabled me to locate him.

A letter from Pat Weiner, reference specialist for the State Historical Society of Missouri, told how she had found a Leon A. Klink in St. Louis city directories for

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Klink has kept letters from Lindbergh, like this note from Kelly Field, where the fledgling cadet was trans­ ferred six months after his enlistment.

1922, 1925, 1928 and 1966. He was listed as a salesman, then as owner of an automobile sales company, and finally as being a retired person.

Checking birth records, I found that Klink had a son.

The son gave me his father's unlisted telephone number.

I dialed and a strong, clear voice said "hello."

"Hello," I said, "are you Leon Klink?"

"Yes, this is Leon Klink."

"The Klink who barnstormed with Lindbergh in 1924?" I asked.

"The same," he answered. "Who is this?"

I explained that I was a writer who, with the help of Senator Barry Goldwater, the governors of five states, the Texas Rangers and many other people, had sought to discover the fate of aviator Klink about whom Lind­ bergh wrote in his books.

With unaffected modesty Klink said, "I'm surprised that all these people have been concerned and have gone to the trouble to locate me. After 50 years I can't remember things as Mr. Lindbergh did in his books, but I'll do my best to tell you about him, and what hap­ pened after I took off alone for Californ ia."

"reminded me that you and I had landed in the same field with the Canuck three years ago." Lindbergh got the engine running, he wrote, "in the afternoon follow足 ing." Keilholz had provided Lindbergh a bed, supper, breakfast and lunch.

A few months after being Mr. Keilholz' nonpaying guest, Lindbergh was sleeping in embassies, being honored by kings and queens, and receiving Raymond Orteig's prize of $25,000, which had been sitting in a bank since 1919, ready to be paid the first aviator to fly nonstop from New York to Paris.

A few days after my first talk with Klink, he sent me a penciled note in a firm, steady hand, recalling the events of a half century ago.

"The plane was flown {after the collision with the Spanish bayonet at Maxon} to a San Antonio air field for final repairs and I left Mr. Lindbergh and kept going west until I came to Calif. a week or 2 later. When I finally got to California I knew I would need a car if I would see what I wanted to so I bought a car (instead of using the Canuck), an old Model T Ford Tour, which I used in Calif. and even Mexico. After over a month I An unimpressed personnel man at Brooks decided to leave for home, so I sold the old car and Field didn't manage to spell the name started back east, and finally got to San Antonio where correctly or even to get the correct initials. again I saw Lindbergh."

Klink's letter made the California-and-return solo trip sound as uneventful as a crosstown bus ride.

I said, "You just referred to him as Mr. Lindbergh."

I phoned Klink again and asked if it all had been that "Yes," Klink "replied, "I was five years his senior but I simple. He said, "I had some accidents, but didn't get have a reverence for him as a great man and I feel easier hurt. Mr. Lindbergh had showed me how to use rope, calling him Mr. Lindbergh. He stayed in aviation but I haywire, and some auto and tractor parts to fix the didn't and, although our interests were different, we Canuck." stayed in touch . The last time I heard from him was Some old-time pilots may dispute this, but I told when my wife Gladys and I observed our 47th wedding Klink I thought he may have been the only pilot to fly anniversary. He sent his congratulations and best wishes an OX-5-powered Canuck west over the Continental for our happiness and long lives."

Divide, and surely the only one to make a roundtrip over Less than a year later, in 1974, Lindbergh's life was this hazardous route in a plane designed for short ended by cancer. training flights over low-altitude country .

Gladys and Leon Klink treasure a hand-scrawled note "I don't know about that," Klink said. "Maybe I from Lindbergh dated "Oct. 12, '26" which begins with made it because I weighed only about 140 pounds and "Dear Lee, i' was very sorry to be unable to attend your the Canuck was flying light with nobody in the front wedding and wish to send you my best wishes even at seat. I did what Mr. Lindbergh told me to do, to stay out th is late day." of clouds, keep the Canuck's nose down and to not get Apparently with nothing else to write about wed足 caught out after dark." dings, Lindbergh devoted nine of the letter's 12 lines to The desire to fly long distances was deeply ingrained flying. Engine failure a couple of weeks before on an in Lindbergh, Klink said. "He had extra tanks installed emergency trip to Wichita had set Lindbergh down on on the Canuck to increase its range . He lashed cans of the farm of J. G. Keilholz, who, as Lindbergh wrote, gas to the fuselage and leaned out in mid-air and poWed

After a takeoff by Lindbergh at Pensacola, the Klink Canuck flopped on a sand dune, its landing gear and propeller shattered. gas from them into the main tank through a hose when the main tank was low. ""Once I had a can of gas in my lap in the back seat, and tanks also were lashed to the cabane struts, and all of this gas weighed so much the poor old Canuck couldn't climb over about 200 feet. I threw my can overboard so we could gain altitude. Lindbergh watched the can falling earthward and shook his head sadly when it burst on impact.

"Fooling around with gas like that was dangerous, but Lindbergh had confidence in himself. He took chances with his life, like on the flight to Paris."

Lindbergh's triumphal return to Lambert Field at St. Louis after his solo flight to Paris was described by a newspaper reporter, in part, as follows: "How tired he looked. A tall boy, with a shock of touseled hair-a boy freshly shaved, but with the grime of travel on his face. Although the crowd shouted in frenzy for him to smile or laugh or do something, he simply stood there-a glum young man, some 6 feet 2 inches in height, whose eyes told the story of how tired he was.

"Smile, Slim! Smile, Slim!" sang out a girl with a camera. Everybody laughed but Slim.

"The only show of emotion was when Leon Klink, his old flying partner, reached over the holding line and grasped his hand.

"Glad to see you, Slim," said Klink. " 'Same to you, Lee,' responded Slim."

Before either of them could say anything about the old Canuck, or talk about the days of old, a shoving mass of humanity separated Slim and Lee. ~

24

he First Plane to Germany

W hat Aviation Experts Say About the Atlantic

Flights and the Future of Ocean Air Commerce

GASOLINE IN

TANK

WINGS

EXTRA GASOLINE TINS

COMPASS

By

George Lee Dowd, Jr.

One minute before Clarence Chamberlin soared aloft in the sturdy Bellanca monoplane Columbia for his record-breaking flight from New York to Germany, the first "air passenger" to Europe climbed 'into the cabin­ Charles Levin, backer of the flight. Levine, it is true, "worked his way" across the ocean ; for besides the du­ plicate instr uments he watched during the flight, he relieved Chamberl in at the controls, now and then, to give the pilot a wink of sleep.

Nevertheless, whi le it took a Lindbergh to blaze the first air trail, alo ne, over the Atlantic to France, it remained for Chamberlin, in his flight to Germany, to first give the world a prophetic glimpse of actual pas­ senger travel in an aerial cabin above the ocean.

By the time you read this, there may be other trans­ ocean fl ights, other overseas air passengers. New wonders . in aviat io n are following one another in bewi ldering succession. What next? What new accomplishments may we expect in the coming weeks and months ?

25

Above: Design and eq uipment of Chamberlin's mono­ plane Columbia. Virtually every part, even the wing struts, was made to increase the plane's lifting capacity.

In messages to POPULAR SC IENCE MONTHLY, a number of America's foremost aviation authorities have given us their impressions of the trans-Atlantic flights and their significance to future air travel.

"Where these men have pioneered, others wil l fol­ low," reads a telegram from Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick, Chief of Air Corps, U. S. Army. "Speeds and pay loads will be increased . Ocean air lines will be organized, and ten years will make commercial air traffic over our oceans the ru le rather than the exception."

Vindication of the air-cooled motor for aviation, with the hope of trans-ocean air lines in the future, is the concrete result of the flights, declares Rear-Admiral William A. Moffett, U.S .N., Chief of the Bureau of Aero­ nautics. "Such rapid progress is now being made," he wires, "that no one can tell what will happen next.

American aeronautics is on its way to even more remark­ able successes."

Ocean-going commercial planes and mid-ocean land­ ing places may be built at any time now, believes Wm. P. McCracken, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics. Their construction awaits only the financial backing that flights such as Lindbergh's and Cham­ berlin's will stimulate. "What," he asks, "is there to prevent a regular trans-Atlantic air transportation sched­ ule within a period of, say, five years, if only the nec­ essary financial backing can be made available?"

Chamberlin landed at Eisleben, Germany, with his last drop of gasoline gone - in accordance with his announced intention of flying as long as his fuel lasted.

Had he been able to re-fuel at some mid-ocea n fil ling station he could have continued indefinitely. "Such facilities are absolutely necessary to make commercial flying on the Atlantic or any other ocean possibl e," wires E. R. Armstrong, inventor of the "seadrome," a "floating airplane field" for this purpose. " I believe that my experimental development of a seadrome unaffected by waves, large enough for an ocean landing field, has been adequately demonstrated and a practical and tested anchorage system evolved so that commerical, everyday duplication of Lindbergh's and Chamberlin's feats is a matter only of finance and the relatively short time nec­ essary to build the structures. It may be a reality by 1930."

Chamberlin and Levine flew at all levels from seven to seventeen thousand feet in an effort to dodge storms. At one time Chamberlin even threw overboard some tanks of gasoline, sacrificing the precious fuel to lighten his ship and weather the storm. Before ocean flying can become practical, the authorities agree, adequate weath­ er data must be available.

"Weather stations along the ocean," says Grover Loening, noted aircraft designer, "coupled with develop­ ment of the seaplane to have an equally long range, would resu lt in regular ocean flights within a period of ten years."

"The flight has not added anything of moment to the science of aviation," was the surprising comment of Giuseppe M. Bellanca, design er of Chamberlin's plane. "I knew the plane. I knew that its motor would propel it for approximately forty-eight hours with its supply of gas. All that had to be done was to get in and pilot it. It took courage to do it, naturally, but simple figures told me the plane would get there ."

One reason for Bellanca's confidence, of course, was the fact that the plane, only a few weeks before, had established a new world's endurance record, flying for more than fifty -one hours without stop. Moreover, the desi gn of the ship embodied an unusual d eparture in monoplane construction . Though classed as a mono­ plane, it is technically known as a "sesqui" plane, or "plane and a half." It is a cross betwee n a monoplane and a biplane; for besides the wings, almost every part of the pl ane helps to lift some of th e weight. Even the wing struts are built with a wing curve, so that they lift a few hundred pounds of the total load.

Future trans-Atlantic plan es, Bell anca pred icts, will be multi-motored craft rath er than si ngle-e ngine planes such as Ch a mberlin and Lindb ergh used. I n case one motor fails, there will be enough reserve power to fly the machi ne with full load. Th ere will be spac ious cabins, comfortable berths and chairs in these planes ; and pas­ sengers will buy their tickets, get th ei r passports and board the planes just as they board ships now.

Will his prophecy come true? Temporary obstacles, chiefly the difficulty of carrying heavy fuel loads, are pointed out by Glenn Curtiss, pioneer airman. "Trans­ Atlantic flights will take place with the esta blishment of fill ing stations," Curtiss telegraphs , "but will not be commonplace until a revolutionary inven tion in motive power is acco mplish ed. I do not like to proph esy when such an invention may occur, but it is a lready in the minds of practical inventors. " E. V. Rick e nbacker, famous American flying ace, predicts that within five years "Americans will demand and have avai labl e a regular oceanic service of forty hours, with greater safety and comfort than that avail­ able today on our finest ocean lin ers." Second Assistant Postmaster-General W. Irving Glover, in charge of the U.s. Air Mail, is even more optimistic. "My prediction," says Glover, "is that within two years Leviathans of the air will span the ocean betwee n America and Europe."

~

LINDBERGH'S

Career Highlights

Above: Clarence Chamberlin (left) and Charles Levine, "passenger," at the nose of the Columbia before hopping off.

April 9, 1922: First flight, Lincoln, Nebraska 1922-1924: Barnsto rming, stunt fl ying. wing walking and parachuting March 14,1925: Graduated from the U.S. Air Service Flying SchooL Kelly Field, San Antonio. Texas April 15, 1926: Chief Pilot, Robertson Aircraft Co. of St. Lo uis. first mail run to Chicago May 10-U, 1927: Established trans·continental air record San Diego to New York May 21).21, 1927: Winner Orteig Prize for first non-stop tra ns- Atlantic flight New York to Paris June II, 1927: Recipient Distingu ished Flying Cross (first ever prese nted) July 21).October 23,1927: Visited 82 cities in 48 sta tes, under auspices o f Guggenheim Fund for the Pro mo tio n of Aeronautics December 13-14, 1927: First non-stop flight Washington, D.C. to Mexico City, Mexico December 14, 1927: Awarded the Med al of Honor by Act of Congress for his non-stop flight from New York to Paris 1928-1931: With Mrs. Lindbergh surveyed polar route to Orient. Also mapped North Atl antic air rou te in 30.000-mile flight to Europe. returning to U.S. by way of So uth Atlantic rim of Africa. SOllth and Ce ntral America 1930-1934: Develo ped perfusion pump to sustai n live orga ns o utside th e body in cooferation with Nobel Prize Winner. Dr. AleXIS Carre a t Rockefeller In stitute. Invented quick method o f se parating serum from whole blood by centrifugal force April 3, 1942: Technical consultant to Ford Moto r Company for first mass production o f warplanes 1942-1943: Test Pilot, P-47 Thunderbolt figh ter. Medical guinea pig for high-altitude tests at Mayo C linic April, 1944: C ivilia n Adviso r in th e Pacific Theater for F4U CO RSAIR aircraft. Flew over 50 combat missio ns.Testing P-38s. he redesigned range o f plane December 17, 1949: 1949 Wri ght Brothers Memorial

Trophy for "significant pliblic se rvice of enduring

value to aviation" .

1949: Special Advisor to U.S.A. F. in Europe. Advised on Berlin Airlift May, 1954: Winner. Pulitzer Prize for Biograph y. "Spirit o f SI. Louis" 1954-1974: Conservation and wildlife prese rvation ex pediiio ns and exploration worldwide 1965-1973: Renewed biomedical research on organ

perfusion apparatus at Naval Medica l Research

Institute. Bethesda. and Department of Surgery.

University of Miami

1966-1972: International Board o f Trustees. World

Wildlife Fund

1969-1972: Presidential Advisory Commission on

Environme ntal Quality

26