A Little Information On The Spirit of St. Louis
In 1919 a Frenchman who owned the Brevoort and Lafayette hotels in New York City, Raymond Orteig, put up a purse of $25,000 to the first aviator to fly nonstop from Paris to New York or New York to Paris. Orteig said his offer would be good for five years. Five years came and went. No one accomplished the feat. No one even tried. In 1926, Orteig extended the term of his offer another five years. This time around aviation technology had advanced to a point where some thought it might actually be possible to fly across the vast Atlantic. Charles A. Lindbergh was one of them.
In 1926 Charles Lindbergh had not yet achieved the level of acclaim of his more illustrious flying counterparts. He had, however, gained a reputation as a talented flyer. His experience as a barnstormer, expert mechanic, and airmail pilot made many within the relatively small community of flyers take notice. As important, Lindbergh was full of the confidence necessary to undertake such a bold adventure. "Why shouldn't I fly from New York to Paris? ...I have more than four years of aviation behind me, and close to two thousand hours in the air. I've barnstormed over half of the forty-eight states. ...Why am I not qualified for such a flight?" he later wrote in his autobiographical book.
The Ryan Airlines Company in San Diego, California was selected to build the new aircraft. It was based on a model that the company was building but had many modifications for such a record breaking endeavour. It had fuel tanks placed in front of the pilot, blocking his view forward. A periscope was installed which allowed Lindbergh a glimpse ahead.
Lindbergh describes the sites of the construction and final assembly of his soon to be famous aircraft in his book, "The Spirit of St Louis" (1953) as follows: "The Ryan Airlines factory is an old dilapidated building near the waterfront...There's no flying field, no hanger, no sound of engines warming up; and the unmistakable smell of dead fish from a near-by cannery mixes with the banana odor of dope from drying wings. This morning we hauled the Spirit of St. Louis to Dutch Flats. By taking off the landing gear on one side, it was easy enough to move the fuselage through the big doorway of the factory's ground floor but the wing in the loft created an unexpected problem...no one thought about getting a forty-six-foot wing out of the room where it was built. For a while it looked as though we'd have to tear out a section of the wall; but careful measurement showed that we could get by if we tipped the wing over at an angle and removed the loft's double doors....Fortunately an empty boxcar was standing on the railroad siding next to the factory and all hands turned out to push the boxcar into a position which would form the first step downward from the loft. Then, with a contractor's derrick, we maneuvered the wing onto the car top, and from the car top down to a waiting truck."
Two days before Lindbergh's scheduled May 10, 1927 departure from San Diego, news broke that Frenchmen Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli had taken off from Paris bound for New York. It appeared as if the efforts of Lindbergh and Ryan Airlines had been in vain. However, despite a radio report claiming that Nungesser and Coli had been spotted over the Atlantic, the two were never seen again. Lindbergh's chance for glory was still within reach. "Lucky Lindy" and his "Spirit of St. Louis" landed at Curtiss Field on Long Island, New York, on May 12, 1927. En route, pilot and plane had already broken the existing record for the fastest transcontinental flight. Eight days later, Lindbergh and the Spirit were poised to set new records as they took off from Roosevelt Field. Fighting fog, icing, and sleep deprivation, Lindbergh landed safely at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 10:22pm on May 20, 1927. "The Spirit of St. Louis" had carried him over 3,600 miles in 33.5 hours.
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