Charles A. Lindbergh

American aviator and writer

• Born: February 4, 1902
• Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan
• Died: August 26, 1974
• Place of death: Hana, Maui, Hawaii

Lindbergh’s historic New York-to-Paris solo flight in 1927 was a turning point in aviation history, and he continued to play a major role in both civil and military aviation, as well as environmental conservation, throughout his life.

Early Life

Charles A. Lindbergh (LIHND-burg) was the only son of Swedish-born Charles August Lindbergh (not Augustus as sometimes incorrectly cited), a Minnesota congressman, and Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh, a Michigan native and chemistry teacher of English-Scotch ancestry. The elder Lindbergh, a Little Falls, Minnesota, lawyer and businessman, served as a Progressive Republican in the United States House of Representatives from 1907 to 1917, where his reform interests included such issues as banking and currency, the midwestern farmer, and the European war. Charles August and Evangeline Lindbergh were estranged early in their marriage, but young Lindbergh regularly spent time with both parents, thus living primarily in Minnesota and Washington, D.C. The elder Lindbergh had remarried after his first wife’s death and young Lindbergh had two half sisters, Lillian and Eva. In his early years, Lindbergh showed his mechanical and scientific bent when, for example, he visited the laboratory of his grandfather Charles Land (a dentist and researcher) in Michigan, and when he drove the car in his father’s 1916 campaign for the U.S. Senate. He was graduated from Little Falls High School in 1918, and, early in the same year, began working the home farm, where he remained until the fall of 1920.

After three semesters at the University of Wisconsin, where he enrolled in the mechanical engineering program and was a member of the rifle team, Lindbergh quit school in early 1922 and became a flying student at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation in Lincoln, Nebraska. During this period, “Slim” Lindbergh (he was six feet three and one half inches tall) gained a reputation as an expert mechanic, parachute jumper, wing-walker, and pilot. He made several swings on the barnstorming circuit in the Midwest and Great Plains with other flying buddies, and, in 1923, he purchased his first airplane, a surplus World War I Curtiss Jenny. In 1924 and 1925, he completed U.S. Army Air Cadet programs at Brooks and Kelly fields in Texas and was graduated at the top of his class with the rank of second lieutenant.

Lindbergh then moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he was head pilot for Robertson Aircraft Company and joined the Missouri National Guard unit. In April, 1926, he became one of the early pilots to carry United States mail when he began flying routes to Peoria and Chicago, Illinois, for Robertson. To compete for the twenty-five-thousand-dollar Orteig Prize for the first New York-to-Paris flight, Lindbergh then secured financial backing from St. Louis supporters; with engineer Donald Hall, he helped to design the specially built monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, at Ryan Airlines in San Diego, California. In early May, 1927, he set a transcontinental speed record when he flew from San Diego to New York via St. Louis.

Even at this point in his life, certain characteristics about Lindbergh had emerged: a constantly inquiring mind, a total sincerity, a meticulous attention to detail and accuracy, and a sense of humor. Like his father, the reform-minded congressman and scholar, he also had a stubborn independence, a sense of courage, and a quiet personal nature.

Life’s Work

Lindbergh established a milestone in aviation history, when, on May 20-21, 1927, he flew The Spirit of St. Louis nonstop from New York to Paris. His historic flight of 3,610 miles in thirty-three hours and thirty minutes was the first one-person crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by air. The flight was followed by an unprecedented and prolonged public response, and, overnight, Lindbergh became a world figure. After receptions in Europe, Lindbergh returned to the United States aboard the cruiser USS Memphis, a trip arranged by President Calvin Coolidge, and was honored in many cities. He received numerous honors and awards, including the Congressional Medal of Honor and a promotion to colonel. Lindbergh also made trips to Latin America and to Mexico, where he met Anne Spencer Morrow, the daughter of United States Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow. Lindbergh and Morrow (now Anne Morrow Lindbergh) were married in 1929.

During the period of rapidly expanding aviation activity after the famous flight and through the 1930’s, Lindbergh served as technical adviser to Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT, later Trans World Airlines, or TWA) and Pan American World Airways (Pan Am). In this capacity, he played a major role in the testing of new aircraft, in planning the first transcontinental route for TAT (he flew the last leg in a Ford Tri-Motor), and in developing regular transoceanic routes for Pan Am. It was Lindbergh, representing TWA, for example, who demanded that the Douglas DC-1 airplane be able to take off and land safely with one engine. Ultimately, the design resulted in the legendary DC-3. The pioneer aviator was among the first to recommend the use of land planes crossing the oceans, a practice now accepted after the early use of Clipper flying boats. On international route development and mapping, Charles and Anne Lindbergh made several long test flights around the world in his Lockheed Sirius monoplane, the Tingmissartog, one of which Anne described in her book North to the Orient (1935). Lindbergh also served as a consultant to the Guggenheim Fund and the United States Bureau of Aeronautics, and, when the airmail crisis occurred in 1934, he took a stand in opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to allow the U.S. Army to fly the mail.

The 1930’s also brought tragedy to the Lindberghs. In 1932, their first child, Charles Augustus, Jr., was kidnapped and murdered. The extensive publicity that continued during the trial, conviction, and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the crime was so distasteful to the Lindberghs that they sought refuge in Europe in 1935. They lived in England and on an island off the coast of France, seeking privacy in rearing their family, which came to include five other children: Jon, Anne, Land, Scott, and Reeve. At this point in his life, Lindbergh’s interest turned to scientific research; he worked closely with surgeonAlexis Carrel in developing a perfusion pump (frequently referred to as a mechanical heart) that was able to sustain life in animal organs outside the body, and with Robert H. Goddard, the founder of modern rocketry, for whom Lindbergh secured important financial support.

While in Europe, Lindbergh studied European military aviation and made three major inspection trips to Germany between 1936 and 1938. After these visits, convinced of German air superiority, he warned against the growing airpower of the Nazi regime. In 1939, Lindbergh returned to the United States and, at the request of General Henry Arnold, assessed United States air preparations.

With the outbreak of war in Europe, Lindbergh began his antiwar crusade. Fearing possible U.S. involvement, he took a public stand for neutrality and later joined the isolationist America First Committee. Because of this controversy, the Lindbergh image was tarnished as political charges were made over his disagreement on U.S. foreign policy with the Roosevelt administration. Bolstered by his father’s adamant stand against Wilsonian policies before American entry into World War I, Lindbergh remained firm in his views.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, however, Lindbergh supported his country fully when it entered the war. Only later was it known that the famous aviator, who resigned his military commission in 1941 under political pressure, had personally tested every type of fighter aircraft used by the United States in the South Pacific. Although a civilian, Lindbergh flew some fifty combat missions, passing on technical knowledge that enabled American pilots to save on fuel consumption and to better shoot down an enemy plane. During the war, he was also a consultant to the Ford Motor Company at the Willow Run plant and made high-altitude chamber tests at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

After World War II, Lindbergh continued to be active in commercial and military aviation, but, increasingly, his time was devoted to two other concerns, conservation and writing. The pioneer aviator, continuing his association with Pan Am and with his friend Juan Trippe (his TWA affiliation had ended in the 1930’s), early advised the introduction of jets and jumbo jets, which opened a new era in air travel. During the postwar years, he served in an advisory capacity on such matters as the Berlin airlift and selection of the U.S. Air Force Academy site. On a long-term appointment, Lindbergh was a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, and he was awarded the rank of brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve in 1954 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In this role, one of his most important contributions was his involvement with the structuring and implementation of the Strategic Air Command.

Devoted to the idea of world ecology and the preservation of natural resources, Lindbergh came to the conclusion that modern technology endangered the natural environment of the world a conflict he described as civilization versus the primitive. Thus, his interests moved from science to mysticism and the study of primitive peoples. Lindbergh valued simplicity in life the earth and sky perhaps harking back to the roots of the Minnesota farm boy with his exposure to woods and water. Indeed, Lindbergh felt strongly about his Minnesota and Scandinavian background, and he participated in several projects concerning the Minnesota Historical Society; the biography of his father, Charles August; and the proposed Voyageurs National Park in the state.

When Lindbergh became involved with conservation, especially in his work as director with the World Wildlife Fund, he relaxed somewhat his strong aversion to the press. As early as 1948, he had warned, in his brief study Of Flight and Life (1948), that the human race could become a victim of its own technology. Further, according to Lindbergh, the overall quality of life should be the paramount goal of humankind. He put it simply when he wrote in 1964, “If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.” Lindbergh, aviator and technician, thus was complemented by Lindbergh, conservationist and defender of wildlife. While he encouraged the use of the Boeing 747 as an efficient aircraft, for example, he questioned the economic efficiency and environmental impact of the supersonic transport and spoke out against it during the debate in 1970. His struggle with changing values is also seen by his support of American retaliatory power during the Cold War, which was set against his worry that aviation and technology had made all people vulnerable to atomic annihilation.

Lindbergh also spent considerable time in many successful writing efforts. We (1927) is a brief account of the famous flight; The Culture of Organs (1938), written with Alexis Carrel, is a record of the research on which the two collaborated. Among his many publications in the post-World War II era are his firsthand and thorough account of the 1927 flight, The Spirit of St. Louis (1953), which won a Pulitzer Prize; his Wartime Journals (1970), drawn from extensive handwritten diaries; Boyhood on the Upper Mississippi (1972), an account of boyhood experiences in Minnesota; and, posthumously, Autobiography of Values (1977), a reflective statement on his life and concerns.

After World War II, Lindbergh lived with his family in Connecticut and then in Hawaii. He continued in his duties as consultant to Pan Am and to the Department of Defense and served on a number of aeronautical boards. Lindbergh died in Hana, Maui, Hawaii, on August 26, 1974.

Significance

Lindbergh is remembered first for his significant contributions to aviation history. From the barnstormers of the 1920’s to the jumbo jets of the 1970’s, Lindbergh was at the center of the immense changes that characterized aviation and aerospace technology in the twentieth century. Evidence of Lindbergh’s superb technical knowledge and substantial leadership is clear, as he participated in numerous crucial decisions affecting its development. It was the 1927 flight that propelled Lindbergh to prominence, and the effects were immediate. For aviation, the historic flight launched a modern era in aviation history. More than any single event, it made the American people aware of the potential of commercial aviation, and there followed a Lindbergh “boom,” with a rapid acceleration in the number of airports, pilot licenses, airlines, and airplanes in 1928-1929. While the crush of publicity was overwhelmingly favorable in 1927, Lindbergh soon came to realize that demands on his time and privacy had irreversibly changed his life. He struggled to maintain his privacy for much of the remainder of his life. From an early dislike of expressions such as Lucky Lindy and the Flying Fool, his distrust for the media deepened after the 1932 kidnapping tragedy. However, the demanding response to Lindbergh was, in part, the history of the 1920’s, an age of expanding print and broadcast journalism. Amid the sensationalism and the Prohibition experiment of the Jazz Age, Lindbergh emerged as an authentic hero to many Americans. People responded enthusiastically to the youthful Lindbergh’s individualism and modest character as well as to the new technology of the airplane.

Lindbergh’s influence, however, includes more than the 1927 flight, significant as it may have been. He was not simply another flyer who set a record. Indeed, his contributions to American life in the forty-seven years between the flight and his death in 1974 included substantial activity in civil and military aviation, scientific research, and conservation. Ultimately, Lindbergh was a man both of science and of philosophical thought. His broad legacy is represented not only in aviation but also in his insistence that, if the planet is to survive, there must be an understanding between the world of science and the world of nature.

Bibliography

Bilstein, Roger E. Flight in America, 1900-1983: From the Wrights to the Astronauts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. The best general scholarly treatment of American aviation. Although Lindbergh is mentioned only briefly, historian Bilstein provides the necessary framework to understand total aviation and aerospace development. Good twenty-page bibliographical note section.

Cole, Wayne S. Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. Well-researched, scholarly study of Lindbergh’s involvement in the noninterventionist movement prior to World War II. Cole, who also authored a book on the America First Committee, utilized Lindbergh interviews and the Lindbergh Papers in his work.

Davis, Kenneth S. The Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh and the American Dream. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959. Popular account of Lindbergh’s life by a well-known journalist. As in many such accounts, there are factual inaccuracies regarding Lindbergh history, yet Davis provides a good overview and some insights into Lindbergh’s life. Includes an eighty-two-page bibliographical essay.

Gardner, Lloyd C. The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Gardner delves into the questionable aspects of the Lindbergh kidnapping case and subsequent trial.

Hardesty, Von. Lindbergh: Flight’s Enigmatic Hero. New York: Harcourt, 2002. Hardesty, a curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, provides a thorough and insightful biography, enlivened with hundreds of color illustrations.

Lindbergh, Charles A. Autobiography of Values. Edited by William Jovanovich and Judith A. Schiff. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. Published posthumously, this study was drawn from extensive manuscript material and notes written over a forty-year period. It touches on virtually all aspects of Lindbergh’s varied life and career but strongly emphasizes his growing concern for the natural environment and his plea for a balance between science and nature. An essential work.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Boyhood on the Upper Mississippi: A Reminiscent Letter. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1972. An outgrowth of several trips to Minnesota aiding various projects on Lindbergh history, Lindbergh responded to Minnesota Historical Society director Russell W. Fridley’s request for Lindbergh data with this long letter. Recounts his boyhood years.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Spirit of St. Louis. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953. Lindbergh’s thorough account of the New York-to-Paris flight in 1927. This literary effort won for him the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for autobiography and biography in 1954. He writes a compelling narrative of the flight and also uses the flashback technique to touch briefly on earlier parts of his life. Lindbergh’s book was the basis for the film The Spirit of St. Louis (1957).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Selected portions from lengthy handwritten diaries Lindbergh kept during the wartime era between 1938 and 1945. Helpful in clarifying his involvement with the nonintervention movement, relations with the Roosevelt administration, and his wartime activities after Pearl Harbor.

Ross, Walter S. The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh. Rev. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Popular account of Lindbergh’s life. Contains some factual inaccuracies. Book went through several editions from first publication in 1964. Broad overview for the lay reader, mostly drawn from secondary sources, with an eighteen-page note section on research.