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This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, the story of a man who had over 200 songs written about him. and was the first to fly across the Atlantic. We're talking about Charles Limberg.
Here to tell the story is Kirk Higgins, the Senior Director of Content at the Bill of Rights Institute. You can check out their great curriculum on American history at mybri.org. That's mybri.org. Let's get into the story. Take it away, Kirk.
It was the evening of May 19th, 1927, and 25-year-old aviator Charles Lindbergh was being hounded by the New York press as he made his way to a Broadway play. Lindbergh hoped that the play would relieve him of some stress. but there's little chance of that. He was preparing a historic attempt to be the first person to fly non-stop from New York to Paris. but the stormy weather across the northern Atlantic hadn't been cooperating lately.
Uh Lindbergh never made it to his Broadway play. Before it had even begun, he received one of the most significant meteorological reports of the century. a high pressure system was going to clear out the storms. The moment he'd been waiting for had come. come.
It was time for Charles Lindbergh to head back to his hotel. and prepare for one of the most courageous. dangerous in historic flights ever. Born in Detroit in 1902 and raised in the sleepy town of Little Falls, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River, Charles Lindbergh was the son of a congressman and a science teacher. and from his earliest years anything mechanical struck his fancy.
he'd tinker with the family car and motorbike in his spare time. It was there in Little Falls that he saw his first airplane. Lindbergh would recall. One day I was playing upstairs in our house on the riverbank. the sound of a distant engine drifted in through an open window.
Suddenly, I sat up straight and listened. No automobile engine made that noise. It was approaching too fast. It was on the wrong side of the house. I ran to the window and climbed out onto the terry roof.
It was an airplane. Flying upriver below higher branches of trees, a biplane was less than 200 yards away. a frail, complicated structure. The pilot sitting out in front between struts and wires. I watched it fly quickly out of sight.
As more Americans took to the skies, Lindbergh's fascination with aviation will grow. He spent hours at his family farm, lying on his back, looking at the clouds and dreaming of flying. And soon he'd be able to touch those clouds. He enrolled in the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. but dropped out by his sophomore year to enroll in flying school out in Nebraska.
On april 9th, 1922, he'd take to the skies for the first time, not piloting, but along for the ride. Later, he'd state about that first flight, trees became bushes, barns, toys, cows turn into rabbits as we climb. I lose all conscious connection with the past. I live only in the moment in this strange, unmortal space, crowded with beauty, pierced with danger. Needless to say, he was hooked.
flying had become an obsession. and his purpose in life. that obsession soon drew Charles Limbert to America's exhilarating. and dangerous. barnstorming circuit.
It wasn't through peace, but war, that the first Americans were trained up on how to fly planes, almost every single one of them in the Curtiss JN9 Jenny. And after World War I, almost all of them were sold for a small fraction of their original cost. For $200, you could buy your very own airplane. That's only a cost of about $3,700 today.
So buy them they did. for mail carrying, smuggling, and barnstorming.
Sometimes all three. Barnstorming, otherwise known as aerial circuses, was very popular in the 1920s. People from all over the country would pay nickels and dimes to see pilots perform astonishing and thrilling acrobatic feats. wing walking, skydiving, even playing tennis between planes. It was a dangerous business, unregulated and open to all, men and women, white and black, and many great pilots, including Charles Lindbergh, would earn their wings this way, making little to no money in the process.
Um He'd join up with the crew as a wing walker and parachutist despite never having done either. On his first jump out of a plane, everything went smoothly up until the second the parachute was supposed to open. Thankfully, it eventually did. But Lindbergh would quit. That if I could fly for 10 years before I was killed in the crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary lifetime.
Deciding skydiving wasn't for him, and feeling as if he had watched people pilot planes enough to know how to do so himself, as he hadn't flown solo up until this point. he'd borrow money from his dad to buy his first airplane at Souther Field in Georgia. He'd later write about the experience: quote, Everybody at Southern Field took for granted that I was an experienced pilot when I arrived by a plane. They didn't ask to see my license because you didn't have to have a license to fly an airplane in 1923. Flying the new plane back to Minnesota would be his first time in the cockpit solo.
he barnstormed all the way back to get enough money to complete the trip. Lindbergh would soon take on a more serious career. the Army Air Service, mostly because he wanted to fly newer, faster planes. He later wrote, Air Service pilots' wings were like a silver passport to the realm of light. With them went the right to fly all military airplanes.
Out of the hundred and three people in his class, only nineteen would graduate. Lindbergh would be at the top. Afterwards, he'd take a job flying airmail on the Saint Louis to Chicago route. The man who became America's most famous airman was a former mailman. just with plenty of extra risk.
Flying the mail was dangerous work. he'd be forced to jump from his plane twice. his parachute luckily breaking his fall each time. And you've been listening to the story of a name and man you know. but probably don't know like this.
I certainly am learning some things about Lindbergh myself and essentially, and especially the part about the role the Army Air Service played in training up, well, all kinds of American pilots, and also the role that these aerial circuses called barnstorming played. In the development of our pilots and our talent in the country. When we come back, more of the story of Charles Lindbergh. Here. on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and your stories. Send us your stories, small or large, to our email, oas at ouramericanstories.com. That's oas at ouramericanstories.com. We'd love to hear them and put them on the air.
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And we return to Our American Stories and the final portion of our story on Charles Lindbergh. Telling the story is Kirk Higgins, the Senior Director of Content The Bill of Rights Institute. You can check out their phenomenal curriculum on American history at mybri.org. When we last left off, Lindbergh had gotten his wings being an aerial circus performer.
Soon he was about to do and be a lot more than that. Let's return to the story. The events that led to Charles Lindbergh's historic flight in 1927 began with an open letter by a New York hotelier to the Aero Club of America in 1919. Gentlemen. As a stimulus to the courageous aviators, I desire to offer Through the auspices and regulations of the Arrow Club of America.
A prize of $25,000 to the first aviator of any allied country crossing the Atlantic in one flight. from Paris to New York or New York to Paris. All other details in your care. Yours very sincerely. Raymond Ortee.
For years, the price sat unclaimed. Not because people flocked to meet the challenge and failed, but because nobody thought it possible. By 1926 though, attempts were being made. A French fighter aces attempt failed on the runway, crashing into a ball of flames, too overloaded. Famed Arctic explorer Richard E.
Byrd also crashed, again, too heavy. Then there was Clarence Chamberlain, another pioneer of aviation. Arguments drove his team apart. Legal disputes followed. Then Stanton Wooster and his partner, Noel Davis.
A crash during a test flight would take their lives. Lindbergh was a late challenger and, different from everyone else, decided to go solo in a single-engine aircraft, a very risky decision. The prize did not demand a solo flight. Nobody had tried it this way. To many, it seemed just as doomed to fail as those who had gone before him.
But to Lindbergh, the challenge seemed possible. He discussed his idea with a couple of businessmen and went to work getting himself an airplane he felt would be suited for the job. Lindbergh's priorities for the plane were simple. First, it had to be efficient. Second, it had to be safe and third, it had to be comfortable.
But that would come last among everything. He'd leave a parachute and radio behind, too heavy. The gas tank would be in front, even though it blocked his sight. He wouldn't need it for most of the trip anyway. But he and his builders installed a periscope just to be in the clear for takeoff and landing.
By April 25th, 1927, the metallic bird dubbed the Spirit of St. Louis was ready to roll. By the time he landed in St. Louis from California a few days later, he was already breaking records at home. Then, on his flight to New York, another record.
The fastest flight across America, less than a day, 22 hours. The time had now come. On the morning of may twentieth, nineteen twenty seven, he climbed into the wicker chair in the cockpit of his airplane. Lindbergh was well aware this flight could be his last. The plane's two tanks were filled with 450 gallons of fuel each.
But as Lindbergh started the single engine and propeller, they responded somewhat sluggishly because of the humidity. Lindbergh wasn't even sure his plane could clear the telephone wires hanging at the end of Long Island's Roosevelt Field. Even if it could, he still had to fly 3,400 miles across a broad expanse of ocean. But shortly before 8 a.m., Lindbergh turned to his crew with a boyish grin and asked. What do you say?
Let's try it. As roughly 500 spectators held their breath, the wheels of the Spirit of St. Louis rolled down the wet runway and bounced twice before the plane lifted Lindbergh into the sky. Cheers of joy and relief erupted from the crowd. But Lindbergh's journey was just beginning, and he understood the perils.
He would write: I'm giving up the continent and heading out to sea in the most fragile vehicle ever devised by man. Yeah. Lindberg followed the New England coast to the northeast and, after four hours in the air, was flying over Nova Scotia, Canada. That's when Lindbergh was faced with another serious and potentially deadly challenge, deep fatigue.
Okay. Lindbergh had been unable to sleep the night before and had been awake for more than 30 hours. He wrote, My whole body agrees dully that nothing Nothing life can attain is quite as desirable as sleep. My mind is losing resolution and control. Yeah.
After eleven hours in the cockpit, flying at 100 miles per hour, Limberg passed over Newfoundland at dusk. he buzzed a fishing town that contained the last humans he would see for nearly two thousand miles. With his fatigue mounting, Lindbergh had a decision to make. He could easily have landed and tried again when he was more fully rested. Lindbergh knew that falling asleep over the Atlantic meant certain death.
But he resolved to continue and flew alone eastward into a very dark and stormy night over the vast expanse of ocean. Limberg flew around thunderstorms and squalls as he fought off sleep. When he climbed near 10,000 feet so that the brisk air would keep him awake, ice built up on the wings and threatened to down the plane. Finally, the skies cleared and the moon rose to guide Lindbergh relentlessly to the east. But Lindbergh didn't know exactly where he was.
With little modern instrumentation or markers in the Atlantic, he used dead reckoning to estimate his position. You can imagine Lindbergh's relief when, twenty seven hours after taking off from New York and flying slow over the Atlantic waves, he spotted his first sign of life since leaving the coast of Newfoundland. A porpoise. Then seagulls. then the unmistakable cliffs of Ireland and boats full of surprised fishermen dotting the waters.
Yeah. Lindbergh goes ecstatic. He was only three miles off course, and on top of that, a favorable tailwind had shaved a few hours off its flight. Things were going great and he noted that time was no longer endless, as it had seemed while he was flying over the vast ocean, where no land was visible in any direction. Giddy with success, Limberg considered extending his record flight by flying all the way to Rome.
But with good sense and humility, he reined in these impulsive thoughts. He still had six hundred miles ahead of him, and the sun was setting yet again. He crossed the comparatively narrow English Channel and entered France on his way to Paris. When he arrived over the city, Limberg flew around the Eiffel Tower and searched out Le Bourget airfield. That's when he noticed something amazing and for a time confusing.
thousands of lights guided him toward the airport in the darkness. These lights were coming from a massive traffic jam of excited Parisians heading to the airfield. When Limbrick finally landed at 10:24 p.m. local time on May 21st, as many as 150,000 onlookers gathered to catch a glimpse of the historic plane and the heroic pilot who flew it. The massive crowd gathered around the Spirit of St.
Louis and began to tear at the plane. desperate for a souvenir. They carried him on their shoulders before he was whisked away by police to the American embassy for a steak dinner and a well-earned night of sleep. after 33 and a half hours airport. He'd been awake for 66 hours.
Lindbergh had done something seemingly impossible. what so many others had tried and failed to do. and he'd made a name for himself to boot. He was, at that moment in time, the most famous man, not just in America, but the world. Marriage proposals were sent.
Thousands of gifts poured in, and over 200 songs were written about him after his flight. For his remarkable courage, he was honored in America with a ticker tape parade. An appearance before Congress in Washington, where 250,000 people greeted him. And awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award in the land. On top of this, he became Colonel Lindbergh.
having been promoted by President Calvin Coolidge himself. Coolidge remarked that Lindbergh's success was the same story of valor and victory by a son of the people that shines through every page of American history. The world was Lindbergh's oyster at this moment. He could have had any job he wanted. His choice was to continue his course.
much as he had done over the Atlantic. He'd go on to state that whatever does not mean help to aviation will not interest me at all. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Kirk Higgins, the Senior Director of Content at the Bill of Rights Institute. You can check out their great curriculum on American history at mybri.org.
That's mybri.org. What a story. Born in Detroit, raised in small town Minnesota alongside the Mississippi River, sees a biplane flying up the river, knows what he wants to do with the rest of his life. And my goodness, choosing to fly solo, this becomes the difference maker. And in the end, what a crazy proposition, but no one had put it forth before.
The story of Charles Lindbergh. Here. on our American stories. The new era of UFC on Paramount Plus comes out swinging. Highlight machine Justin Gagey collides with Patty the Batty Pimlet in a must-see high-octane main event.
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