On This Day in Aviation History-Surviving

I met a couple the other day who were, and are, “survivors”.  My dad used to say,  “That’s the name of the game, Barry.  Surviving.”  This couple…and Lindbergh as we’ll see below, too…remind me of dad’s aphorism.  This couple lost their youngest daughter as a young woman to a car accident.  They somehow survived this ordeal only to receive the call from the police all parents fear, again, this time with their second daughter, who had been involved in a head-on crash.  She was unconscious for days but finally woke up.  She blessedly recovered from her injuries but succumbed to drug addiction.  Their daughter is now a recovering addict, living with her 75-year-old parents while she continues her life-long recovery from drug addiction.

Many of us would have crumpled under the weight of their stress, grief, and pain.  But they have survived.  God bless them. 

Lindbergh, too, was a survivor.  He survived several plane crashes and several escapes by parachute from stricken aircraft as a young man.  He survived the first solo flight across “the pond”, described below.  He survived intense public scrutiny and lack of privacy as the world’s most famous man.  He (and his wife and marriage) survived the kidnapping, ransome, and murder of his first child.  He survived his political “cancelling” before WWII, the dislike of President Roosevelt and many in Roosevelt’s administration, and accusations of passivism and antisemitism, some of which may have been justified.  He survived 50 combat missions in the Pacific Theater during WWII while flying as a civilian “advisor”, missions in which he was not supposed to be involved, even shooting down a Japanese Mitsubishi Ki-51.  

Mitsubishi Ki-51 like the one Lindbergh shot down.  Courtesy Wikipedia.

Under the same stressors, grief, pain, and brushes with death, many other men would have given up, dropped out, just quit.  But not Lindbergh.  He knew the “name of the game.”  He was a survivor.  

At 7:52 a.m. on May 20, 1927 (it was Friday in 1927), according to History.com, “American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, on the world’s first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris.

“Lindbergh, a young airmail pilot, was a dark horse when he entered a competition with a $25,000 payoff to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. He ordered a small monoplane, configured it to his own design, and christened it the Spirit of St. Louis in tribute to his sponsor–the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce.

Lindbergh with the Spirit of St. Louis, prior to his flight “across the pond.” Courtesy Wikipedia.

“It was a rainy morning when he took off from Roosevelt Field and his monoplane was so loaded down with fuel that it barely cleared the telephone wires at the end of the runway. He flew northeast up the East Coast and as night fell, he left Newfoundland and headed across the North Atlantic.

“His greatest challenge was staying awake; he had to hold his eyelids open with his fingers and hallucinated ghosts passing through the cockpit. The next afternoon, after flying 3,610 miles in 33 1/2 hours, Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget field in Paris, becoming the first pilot to accomplish the solo, nonstop transatlantic crossing.

“Lindbergh’s achievement made him an international celebrity and won widespread public acceptance of the airplane and commercial aviation.”