Number of transatlantic flights before Lindbergh

[baclightning]

In the excellent reply about flights across the Atlantic prior to Charles Lindberghs'

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtransatlantic.html

the author notes, "I've come across various estimates of exactly how many men crossed the Atlantic before Lindbergh, ranging from the high 60s to the low 90s. I haven't been able to find a comprehensive list anywhere--and I've been looking on and off for years. I decided to compile my own list and came up with 84 men: 18 by airplane and 66 by airship. There may be others I don't know of."

There is a book about this exact subject - it's called The 91 Before Lindbergh, written by Peter Allen, and published by Airlife Publishing in 1984. (ISBN 0-906393-37-X).

As you can tell by title, Allen writes that 91 men flew the Atlantic prior to Charles Lindbergh. One major difference from the list given is that the Straight Dope writer writes:

"In 1922, Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral of the Portuguese Navy flew most of the way from Portugal to Brazil with several stops in three different flying boats. However, they fell several hundred miles short of completing the longest leg of the trip, from the Rocks of St. Peter and St. Paul to the Island of Fernando de Noronha, and were rescued twice."

According to Allen however, the two Portuguese aviators actually did complete their trip on June 5, 1922, with a third Fairey IIID seaplane (not flying boat) which was flown out from Portugal.

Others missing from the Straight Dope list are four Brazilians who flew from Genoa to Natal in April/May 1927 using a Savoia-Marchetti flying boat, and four talains who flew from Caligari to Argentina in February 1927 using a Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boat.

Hope this helps!

[Zoe]

Welcome, baclightning!

Any insights on why these people are not credited by most and Lindberg is?

(I confess that I haven't read the thread that you linked to.)

[Fear Itself]

Lindbergh did it alone.

[Ice Wolf]

Originally posted by Fear Itself
Lindbergh did it alone.

Quoting from the article:

The fact that he did it alone no doubt contributed to his fame, if only because he didn't have to share the spotlight with anyone.

[bibliophage]

Wow, I wish I had known about that book before. It would have made my research a whole lot easier. I see several places online that are selling the book used, so I'll probably buy a copy.

The case of Coutinho and Cabral is complicated. Many authorities do count them as having successfully crossed the Atlantic. From what I know of the flight, and from my totally subjective opinion of what should and what shouldn't count, I would say close but no cigar.

As I understand it, they made it as far as The Rocks of St. Peter and St. Paul safely. They made it part of the way from there to the Island of Fernando de Noronha, but had to be rescued by ship. Then starting with a new plane they set out from Fernando de Noronha and headed back toward the Rocks of St. Peter and St. Paul (so they couldn't be accused of skipping that leg of the journey). But they had to be rescued yet again. So they flew part of that leg the westward in one plane and part of the leg eastward in another, but they never really flew that whole leg. Now it's been several months since I read up on this, so I could be misremembering the details. There is no doubt that they successfully completed the last two legs in a third plane, from Fernando de Noronha to Rio de Janeiro.

The Feb. 1927 flight you refer to is, I think, that of Francesco de Pinedo. I found a reference to this flight after I wrote the report, but I haven't found any detailed descriptions about it that I would consider trustworthy. I have been intending to look it up in the New York Times the next time I go to a library that has the NYT on microfilm that far back.

The flight in April/May 1927 doesn't hring a bell. A Google search turns up reference to João Ribeiro de Barros as leader of the expedition. I'll have to do some more reseach on this too.

Thanks for the information. I will have the report updated after I do some library research, probably in the next week or two.

[Derleth]

Originally posted by Fear Itself
Lindbergh did it alone. Eh, so what? Solo flights were on the way out anyway. Airtravel only makes sense if you can sell it like they sold sea travel during the era of the Grand Liners.

I've always thought that Lindbergh was overhyped and basically irrelevant. He did what many had done before and many have done since, and he did it an a fundamentally nonsensical way.

[baclightning]

Originally posted by Zoe
Welcome, baclightning!

Any insights on why these people are not credited by most and Lindberg is?

(I confess that I haven't read the thread that you linked to.)

I think that Fear Itself is correct in noting that the fact that Linbergh flew alone created an aura of romance that was not present in the other flights. That, coupled with his flying between two major metropolitan areas, rather than the rural take off and landing spots of Alcock and Whitten-Brown (Newfoundland and Ireland), made his flight much more interesting to the general public. From a strictly aviation standpoint, however, the flights of the NC-4 (the first Atlantic crossing by air of any kind), and Alcock and Brown (the first direct Atlantic crossing) are probably more significant. The major impact of Lindbergh's flight was that it sparked interest in aviation like no other event, before or since. Alcock and Brown and the NC-4 crew were, however, well-known in their day. Alcock and Brown were knighted, their plane has a prominent place in London's Science Museum, and there is a statue of the two outside Heathrow airport in London. Alcock was killed in a flying accident soon after the Atlantic flight and Whitten-Brown gave up aviation, so that may have contributed to them being less well-remembered.

Most Britons are aware that Alcock and Brown flew the Atlantic before Lindbergh, but national orientation wouldn't explain why most Americans are unaware of the NC-4 flight, since that was made by the US Navy. I think all three of these pioneering flights deserve credit.

[baclightning]

Originally posted by bibliophage


The case of Coutinho and Cabral is complicated. Many authorities do count them as having successfully crossed the Atlantic. From what I know of the flight, and from my totally subjective opinion of what should and what shouldn't count, I would say close but no cigar.

As I understand it, they made it as far as The Rocks of St. Peter and St. Paul safely. They made it part of the way from there to the Island of Fernando de Noronha, but had to be rescued by ship. Then starting with a new plane they set out from Fernando de Noronha and headed back toward the Rocks of St. Peter and St. Paul (so they couldn't be accused of skipping that leg of the journey). But they had to be rescued yet again. So they flew part of that leg the westward in one plane and part of the leg eastward in another, but they never really flew that whole leg. Now it's been several months since I read up on this, so I could be misremembering the details. There is no doubt that they successfully completed the last two legs in a third plane, from Fernando de Noronha to Rio de Janeiro.

The Feb. 1927 flight you refer to is, I think, that of Francesco de Pinedo. I found a reference to this flight after I wrote the report, but I haven't found any detailed descriptions about it that I would consider trustworthy. I have been intending to look it up in the New York Times the next time I go to a library that has the NYT on microfilm that far back.

The flight in April/May 1927 doesn't hring a bell. A Google search turns up reference to João Ribeiro de Barros as leader of the expedition. I'll have to do some more reseach on this too.

Thanks for the information. I will have the report updated after I do some library research, probably in the next week or two.

Glad to be of help - I hope you find a copy of the book; it's well worth reading.

Your account of the Coutinho and Cabral is correct; I agree that it's a judgement call, but since they did actually complete the leg back from Fernando de Noronha to the Rocks of St. Peter and St. Paul, and were forced down on the return flight, they did actually complete the entire distance by air, albeit partly in the wrong direction. Using three different planes to complete the journey is a bit excessive, though. :D

I think they count as making it, although I understand why others wouldn't agree.

The April/May 1927 flight was indeed by João Ribeiro de Barros and three others. This again was a flying boat trip that took quite a long time, and suffered several accidents. It left Genoa on October 17, 1926, reached Gibraltar by October 19, and flew to Porto Praia by November 9. Here a dispute occured between de Barros and Artur Cunha, his co-pilot. Cunha quit, forcing de Barros to have a new co-pilot shipped by sea from Brazil. At the same time, de Barros returned to Italy to obtain spare parts.

The flight resumed on April 27, 1927, and was forced down by fuel line troubles near Fernando Noronha. The aircraft was repaired, and reached the Brazilian mainland on May 14, 1927, just a few days before Lindbergh took off.

The Pinedo round-trip flight of February 1927 also had its problems. To quote Allen,

"Pinedo had intended to fly the South Atlantic in one stage from Bolama to Natal but the difficulties of take-off were too great - seven attempts to take off with enough fuel to reach the Brazilian mainland had failed - so the Italians flew back to Dakar on February 18 and then to Porto Praia in the Cape Verde Islands on February 19 to shorten the transatlantic stage.

"At Porto Praia the difficulties of take-off continued and several attempts failed. At last after reducing their fuel and food to a minimum they got away about 1 AM on February 22. They had a grim flight of 15 hrs and 15 min as on reaching the coast of Brazil they could not put down because of storm conditions and rough seas and had to go back to Fernando Noronha...on February 24 they got across to Port Natal and Recife."

Their troubles weren't yet over. The aviators flew up the continent to the US to fly the return leg, and on April 5 the flying boat was at Roosevelt Dam in Arizona. As it was being refuelled, two local boys approached in a rowing boat and threw a burning match over the side, which ignited some spilled fuel on the water; the resulting fire completely destroyed the airplane.

The US Government was aghast at this, and offered a replacement aircraft, but Pinedo preferred an identical S.55, and had one brought all the way from Italy; they landed back in Rome on July 16, after Lindbergh had flown to Paris.

[Askance]

Originally posted by Zoe
Any insights on why these people are not credited by most and Lindberg is?

He was American.

[Xema]

Originally posted by AndrewT
He was American.

It was no doubt that fact alone that caused thousands of French people to mob Lindbergh when he landed.

[Balloon]

Excellent report. And very useful additions by backlightning. I found this forum while searching for the Allen book.
Wether it is 84 or 91 seems to be a matter of taste. Anyhow it is very good to have them all listed together with all your comments for or against.

Just one minor item.

Hugo Eckener was not Captain of the Hindenburg on its last flight. He was flying the Graf Zeppelin back to Europe from Recife, Brazil to Friedrichshafen. They landed May 8th, the day after the Hindenburg accident.

Captain of the Hindenburg on its last flight was Max Pruss. He was also on board LZ 126 October 1924. Captain Pruss did not survive the accident.

[C K Dexter Haven]

Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, Balloon, glad to hope you with us, and hope to hear more from you!

[bibliophage]

Originally posted by Balloon
Hugo Eckener was not Captain of the Hindenburg on its last flight. He was flying the Graf Zeppelin back to Europe from Recife, Brazil to Friedrichshafen. They landed May 8th, the day after the Hindenburg accident.

Captain of the Hindenburg on its last flight was Max Pruss. He was also on board LZ 126 October 1924. Captain Pruss did not survive the accident. My apologies. I thought that error in the report had been fixed already. I'll fire off an e-mail to the power that be to get that taken care of.

I still have not read the Peter Allen book. I should really get on that.

[Mogadon]

quote:

Lindbergh did it alone.

end quote


I'm with Derleth on this - I can't see that doing something alone adds hugely to the achievement, and I suspect that thousands mobbed any aviator who completed a spectacular event in those days (so long as they landed somewhere accessible)

After all, there were several solo powered heavier-than-air flights before the Wrights, and noone remembers those. The Wrights were the first to achieve effective controlled flight, but they were not half as influential as, say, Santos-Dumont. If they had never existed the history of aviation would have been basically unchanged.

I think that what we are talking about here is not related to actual history (though determining that is pretty tricky), but rather what stories have become passed down through the media. Americans, for instance, seem to be routinely taught that Lindburg was the 'first to fly the Atlantic'. and that the Wrights 'invented the aeroplane'. I understand the Brazilians are taught about Santos-Dumont. The Americans have got a bigger English-speaking media output - that is why their version is the one we hear about. So the issue of later fame is not one of what happened at the time - it's to do with who interprets the stories later.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally posted by Mogadon
After all, there were several solo powered heavier-than-air flights before the Wrights, and noone remembers those.
Well then, could you give a cite for one, please?
Originally posted by Mogadon
Americans, for instance, seem to be routinely taught that . . . the Wrights 'invented the aeroplane'. They got a patent* for this, and sucessfully defended it in Court against people who copied them.

*#821,393, issued May 22, 1906

[Dr. Rieux]

Captain Max Pruss did survive the Hindenburg, and died around 1960.
It was his colleague, Captain Ernst Lehmann, who died from burns.
Lehmann was travelling to the US as a representative of the Zeppelin Company (supposedly to try to buy helium form the US government).

[Mogadon]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Mogadon
After all, there were several solo powered heavier-than-air flights before the Wrights, and noone remembers those.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well then, could you give a cite for one, please?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I should have thought there were dozens on the web - here is a url from the top of the list I found, but you could look up several others - try Maxim or Richard Pearse.


http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/28339


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by t-bonham@scc.net

They got a patent* for this, and sucessfully defended it in Court against people who copied them.

*#821,393, issued May 22, 1906
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes - my point exactly. They got a patent for wing-warping, not for inventing the aeroplane. If you were to give this to anyone, it would probably be Sir George Cayley.


It is hard for the rest of the world to understand the American love of litigation, but this is bound up with the reason the Wrights were not influential in the early history of flight. They carried out their experiments with few observers, and seem to have wanted to make their fortune by controlling all future aircraft development, unlike Santos-Dumont, and many other researchers, who made their discoveries freely available.

The Wrights got a patent for wing-warping as a directional control, a technique which was superceeded almost immediately by Bell's ailerons. Quite why a patent should be taken as a proof of anything escapes me, given the current patent mess in IT, but it is worth noting that the Wrights then lost it again. The cite I give above indicates another issue with the legislative approach to invention - the Smithsonian is only able to hold onto the Wright Flyer so long as it conforms to the following agreement:

" Neither the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered for the United States of America by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Airplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight."

This effectively binds much of the scientific and historic establishment in the US.

I thought this thread was about Lindenburgh and Fame, but the above exchange also indicates the processes which may be used to influence or change history.

[John W. Kennedy]

As the American Scientist article says, the Wrights were the first to be powered, piloted, sustained, controlled, and heavier than air. Until you have all of those, you don't have airplanes.

[Mogadon]

Quote .........................................

As the American Scientist article says, the Wrights were the first to be powered, piloted, sustained, controlled, and heavier than air. Until you have all of those, you don't have airplanes.

End Quote ....................................


Not the case at all. When you have a machine in the air you have an aeroplane. When it is heavier than air, you have a heavier than air aeroplane. When it has an engine it is powered, and so on. Quite how you measure 'sustained' and 'controlled' must be questionable - in any case, the article points out that:

"... one might reasonably wonder why a flight must be sustained or achieve control to count for a "first."

and goes on to say that picking the Wright's flight is an arbitary point 'but it does make for a good national party'. Perhaps you might also want to include a line saying that a true aeroplane must land with all the parts it took off with - I believe the Flyer dropped its wheels on take-off?


But all this is moving further from the thread, and not even answering my point in the previous post. I said that there were several solo, powered, heavier-than-air flights before the Wrights, and I specifically avoided mentioning issues like controllability (which only became an issue later with the wing-warping patent debacle which set America back so badly in early aviation), because I was not trying to cover the issue of first flights. The thread is about Lindbergh and Transatlantic flights, and I was talking about the nature of later attribution and fame.

[Balloon]

Originally posted by Dr. Rieux
Captain Max Pruss did survive the Hindenburg, and died around 1960.
It was his colleague, Captain Ernst Lehmann, who died from burns.
Lehmann was travelling to the US as a representative of the Zeppelin Company (supposedly to try to buy helium form the US government).

Yes you are quite right. I was too quick reading the accident report.
Kapitän Lehmann was also on board LZ 126 in October 1924.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally posted by Mogadon
Perhaps you might also want to include a line saying that a true aeroplane must land with all the parts it took off with - I believe the Flyer dropped its wheels on take-off? You believe wrong. The 1903 Flyer was launched via a trolley which ran on a railed track until it reached airspeed. There were no wheels on the Flyer to be dropped. In the famous photo of the first flight (http://www.nasm.edu/galleries/gal100/wright_flight.jpg), you can clearly see the launching track.

You might as well claim that planes launched from aircraft carriers don't count as aeroplanes because they don't carry their launching catapault with them.

[Mogadon]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Mogadon
Perhaps you might also want to include a line saying that a true aeroplane must land with all the parts it took off with - I believe the Flyer dropped its wheels on take-off?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You believe wrong. The 1903 Flyer was launched via a trolley which ran on a railed track until it reached airspeed. There were no wheels on the Flyer to be dropped. In the famous photo of the first flight, you can clearly see the launching track.

You might as well claim that planes launched from aircraft carriers don't count as aeroplanes because they don't carry their launching catapault with them.

end quote ....................................


Thanks for the information. Indeed you could claim this - it doesn't seem unreasonable to specify that for the first 'true' aeroplane there should be no 'unusual or ground-assisted launch'. That's why Ader's Eole is generally considered the first true powered flight rather than du Temple's, because the latter used a ramp for launch. Of course, in the case of modern carrier aircraft the catapult or ski-jump is an aid rather than a necessity at all times!


All this simply shows the lengths people will go to to claim that their favourite was the first/most important/what-have-you, and any competitor should be ruled out on retrospective grounds which were not even considered as an issue at the time.

It is getting hard to see where this thread is leading. I presume noone disagrees with my main point - that there were several powered heavier-than-air flights before the Wrights - but that these are generally ignored because of the effect of later publicity machines.

In retrospect the most appropriate way to look at the Wright's aeroplane is as one step on a fairly seamless progression in the achievement of heavier-than-air flight. It is important because it made considerable advances in proving control principles. Once all the principles of flight were mapped out, success depended primarily on achieving a suitable power/weight ratio, and this became possible in the decade 1900-1910.


The point was only made in support of the main discussion, which was about Lindbergh and Fame. I am sure there must be another thread somewhere if people want to discuss what constitutes a 'first flight'. I wish we could get back to the main topic.

[Gyrate]

Originally posted by Derleth
Eh, so what? Solo flights were on the way out anyway. Erm, sort of. It's the combined element of long-distance flight and heroic endurance that makes Lindberg's a particularly good story; with two or more people you can sleep in shifts, or have one person fixing something while another steers and so forth. A solo flight over the ocean means that if you fall asleep the clowns will ea...erm, the plane will crash, and you can't land anywhere (unless you've got one of those wussy boat-planes, of course). It all makes for good copy.

This sort of thing still exists in the form of the regular round-the-world solo boat race (and having watched Ellen Macarthur's video diaries, the "fall asleep and you die" element very much applies there as well).

As an aside bit of trivia, Kurt Weill wrote an oratorio called The Lindbergh Flight (Der Lindberghflug) which is not bad at all, and features a rather tender aria sung by Lindburgh to his engine.

[Mogadon]

quote...........................
It's the combined element of long-distance flight and heroic endurance that makes Lindberg's a particularly good story; with two or more people you can sleep in shifts, or have one person fixing something while another steers and so forth.
end quote.....................


I would have thought that a solo adventure would have made for a worse story. Video diaries didn't exist, so there was no interaction of any kind to report. Devices like singing to an engine seem to be stretching for something to say, but a two man crew lets the reporters interview both afterwards and report snippets of conversation - just the sort of human interest feature the public lap up.

Also a solo Atlantic crossing (I suppose by boat or plane) is an all or nothing affair. Either it all works ok with no drama, or you're dead and there's no story. Look at what you can report about Alcock and Brown - one 'fighting the controls' while the other was out on the wing trying to hammer the ice away from a dying engine - just the stuff that newspaper reports are made of. Fighting sleep just doesn't have the same ring.

I think that a much better story could be made out of the Alcock and Brown flight, or out of several of the other flights where there were difficulties to overcome. With the best will in the world, staying awake for 55 hours is not a good basis for an exciting story.

[John W. Kennedy]

It also meant an aircraft advanced enough that a single man could fly it non-stop across the Atlantic. Which meant that it had to be fast enough that he could stay awake, and reliable enough that he could keep it running without an engineer for backup.

Which is, I dare say, why people at the time thought it important enough to offer a prize for the first one to do it.

[Mogadon]

Quote..................
It also meant an aircraft advanced enough that a single man could fly it non-stop across the Atlantic. Which meant that it had to be fast enough that he could stay awake, and reliable enough that he could keep it running without an engineer for backup.

Which is, I dare say, why people at the time thought it important enough to offer a prize for the first one to do it.
end quote.........................

Hmm, several points here.

First, I should correct an error. The Lindburg flight was 33 hours, not 55 as I mistyped earlier. That would have been some flight!

The gist of the argument above is that Lindburg was famous because solo flying meant he was the first with a swift and reliable plane, and that was sufficiently important for a prize to be awarded.

Even if the facts supported this assertion I would question why this particular level of speed and reliability was so important. We still have flight engineers for Atlantic flights, so it's obviously no big deal to keep two persons in the cockpit. But the facts seem to show that the Spirit and the Vimy were quite similar in both respects.

The Vimy was designed 10 years before the Spirit, so you would expect it to have a slower top speed. But the specs I found give it 103 mph, as opposed to the Spirit's 116 mph, not a lot of difference. It took 16 hours for the Vimy to cross, while the Spirit took 33 hours for a longer distance, but there was no need for anyone to stay awake for a day or more to cross the Atlantic.

The Vimy problems were not mechanical reliability (though it did lose an exhaust deflector), but ice. It ran into bad icing conditions, and Brown had to break the ice from the engine's cooling louvres. Lindburg managed to avoid these, otherwise we would have not heard from him again. The Vimy was quite competent across the Atlantic - in 1919 Keith and Ross Smith had flown one from England to Australia, about 11,000 miles. That flight had one mechanical problem; a failed oil gauge.

Keith and Ross Smith got a £10,000 prize for the Australia flight, and coincidentally Alcock and Brown also received £10,000 - about £500,000 in todays money. It is an interesting idea to suggest measuring fame by the receipt of prizes - I don't think this is a completely unbiased measure, and sometimes may be completely misleading, but if we accept it in this instance, I note that Lindburgh received the $25,000 Orteig award, which equates to about £5200 with the exchange rate of the time. That would suggest that Lindburg was thought about half as famous/important as Alcock and Brown?

[John W. Kennedy]

$25,000 then is at least $250,000 now, and probably more.

[Mogadon]

Yes, that looks right, but I can't see that it alters my comparison at all. Are you having difficulty with the difference between £ and $? Perhaps if I use the currency initials it will help. The following data is taken from the site (or cite!) below:

http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.html

which uses current research statistics, and is invaluable for cross-era cost comparisons. In the figures below, GBP=Great Britain Pounds, and USD=United States Dollars. (Calculation figures will vary slightly as I shall round to the nearest whole number and display 2 sig. figs.)


Vimy Prize - 10,000 GBP or 43,478 USD at the 1919 rate of 4.35 dollars to the pound
Spirit Prize - 5250 GBP or 25,000 USD at the 1927 rate of 4.76 dollars to the pound


In terms of 'purchasing power' (which can never be an accurate statement as implied by the figures below):

10,000 GBP in 1919 = 275,044 GBP in 2002 (My original figure, gathered from another web site, is 82% out! I suspect a $/£ mix-up again)
25,000 USD in 1927= 258,606 USD in 2002 (Your figure of 'more than 250,000 USD' was remarkably accurate!)

If we compare the 'current figures', Alcock and Brown suffer a bit with the modern lower exchange rate, but the Vimy prize is still approximately twice the Spirit prize (1.88 now as opposed to 1.9 then).


Current Spirit Prize 'purchasing power' - 146,602 GBP at latest GBP/USD rate ( Live mid-market rate of 1.764 as of 2003.12.21 12:51:30 GMT.)
Current Vimy Prize 'purchasing power' - 275,044 GBP

[commasense]

I'd like to make some comments about the Wright Brothers (e.g. they conducted real scientific research and testing of the principles of flight, unlike the vast majority of their contemporaries, including Chanute, Langley, etc.) but it's too late to go into much length on that point now.

The contemporary reaction to Lindbergh's flight had a lot to do with the times: the Roaring Twenties, a period of optimism, rapid technological advances, and prosperity. Fads and publicity stunts were rampant. It was also a time in which the first truly mass (and instantaneous) medium, radio, had achieved nearly total saturation of the industrialized world, thus allowing news to spread virtually instantly around the world.

Lindbergh was a handsome, modest, clean-cut young man who typified the rugged individualism of America. His feat entailed courage, technical skill, and risk, and he handled it well. And there was prize money involved. All these factors and more were responsible for the public acclaim he received, not merely accomplishing an aviation "first."

Finally, Mogadon: you write well, you seem to be well informed about aviation (although I may differ with you about the importance of the Wright Brothers' role). Would it kill you to spell Lindbergh's name correctly?

[SkyCowboy]

Originally posted by Zoe
Any insights on why these people are not credited by most and Lindbergh is?

Zoe,

Lindy did it alone, he did it in a single-engine airplane, he did it with only the most rudimentary navigation equipment, and by all rights should not have succeeded. Just the fact that he made when everyone expected him to never be seen again contributed greatly to the aura of his feat.

To reach Paris he had to stay awake for 33 hours after getting almost no sleep the night before leaving. And the single-engine in his airplane had to work flawlessly from start until finish, a rather remarkable feat for engines of that era.

The two nicknames he was most commonly known by after the flight, point out why he became famous: "Lucky Lindy" and "The Lone Eagle." It also didn't hurt that he was young and handsome and looked like the proto-typical All-American boy. He also did it largely on the strength of his own initiative, without government or corporate backing. (Of course he did receive seed money from the syndicate in St Louis.) But it was largely a story of one man succeeding because of grit and determination -- overcoming almost unsurmountable odds.

A natural to be made into a hero by the public and media.

Best wishes,

Sky