To fly
From childhood, Charles was interested in technology, because the family car and motorcycle were always in a semi-disassembled state. He entered the University of Wisconsin, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, but two years later became a cadet at the military flight school in Lincoln. I couldn't finish my studies there either, I didn't have enough money. To earn extra money, he traveled around the country, was an aerial acrobat, performing unthinkable tricks on the wing of a flying plane, and worked as a mechanic. Having saved up a few hundred dollars, he bought an old biplane and joined the postal aviation, which was considered no less honorable than serving in the army. It shuttled between Chicago and St. Louis and made more than seven thousand flights in five years.
Lindbergh was pushed to a solo flight across the Atlantic by a $ 25,000 prize announced in the newspapers, but preparation for it required a lot of money. Charles convinced several St. Louis entrepreneurs to help him. For the flight, Lindbergh chose a small single-engine aircraft with an upper wing. With the designer of the car, I thought about how to remake it for a transatlantic flight, removing everything that could be done without.
Spartan conditions did not frighten Lindbergh, although the plane lost even a sextant, fuel gauge and radio station. Charles also refused five hundred grams of mail, for the delivery of which the collector-philatelist offered him a thousand dollars, and took four sandwiches with him from the provisions. At the end of April 1927, the car was ready, it was given the name "Spirit of St. Louis".
One over the ocean
The morning of May 21, 1927 was rainy. The plane was towed to the longest runway at New York airport. "The spirit of St. Louis will not leave me!" were Charles' parting words to the reporters crowding the runway.
Over the Long Island Sound, the aircraft accompanying him with the reporters shook its wings and lay on the return course. Lindbergh was left alone. Below, between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, ice floes floated, lead waves rocked several ships. Remembering the hours spent over the Atlantic, Lindbergh said that the spirit of St. Louis then saved him from death.
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By noon the next day, from a steamer two hundred miles from the British Isles, Lindbergh's plane was spotted and immediately reported by radio. The whole world, impatiently following the flight, learned: the brave American did not perish in the ocean abyss.
A couple of hours later, Lindbergh noticed a fishing schooner below and decided to clarify his location. Today it may seem like a fiction, but then they flew like that. Lindbergh went down, slowing down the engine speed, shouting and gesturing to ask the skipper which way Ireland was. But he either did not hear him, or did not understand.
At 19 hours 40 minutes "Spirit of St. Louis" flew over Plymouth, and soon the Paris lights loomed. Lindbergh flew around the Eiffel Tower, after a few laps discovered Le Bourget airport. I was surprised that the road to it was blocked by cars. This is the last circle over the field, landing. Having safely covered the distance of 5800 kilometers in 33 hours and 22 minutes, Lindbergh set foot on the ground only half an hour later. The enthusiastic crowd carried him in their arms to incessant applause. For Charles, such a meeting was a surprise, because upon arrival in Paris, he dreamed of finding only a cheap hotel.
Flight to Paris
Lindbergh became America's national hero. The US Congress awarded him the rank of Colonel of the Air Force, the press called him “American No. 1,” and the US President sent a warship to France for Charles. The day after landing, Lindbergh was received by the President of France, who presented him with the Legion of Honor. On the same day, Charles visited the pioneer of world flights, Louis Bleriot.
Vladimir Shitov