It has come to my attention that Charles Lindbergh, the great aviator, was NOT the first to cross the Atlantic by Plane. According to the Unsolved Mysteries®, a couple of French aviators actually completed the voyage nearly 2 weeks before Lindbergh. However, as they were over Conn., theyre plane crashed inm the forest and the deed went unknown. In the nearby town They have living witnesses, one testifying to seeing the plane and the others hearing it flying overhead. Apparently that was the first time a plane was ever heard, so it sticks in their memorys. A hunter sais he found a plane engine in the forest, but can’t find it again. I missed part of the show, and I haven’t found any other info, so I turn to the SDMB to help. What’s the story?
It is true that a pair of Frenchmen attempted to fly across the Atlantic ocean, but they failed. While they may, as some evidence suggests, have made it to North America, they crashed and were never seen again. Therefore, their attempt doesn’t really count. “Lucky Lindy” was the first one to successfully fly across the atlantic solo.
Lindberg never claimed to be the first to fly across the Atlantic. His claim to fame is that he was the first to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. If two Frenchmen flew together across the Atlantic in 1927, they were about 8 years too late to break any kind of record.
1st across the Atlantic: Lt. Commander Albert Read and 5 other men from Newfoundland to Lisbon with a stop in the Azores. Flight completed May 27, 1919
1st across the Atlantic nonstop: Capt. John Alcock and Lt. Arthur Brown from Newfoundland to Ireland. Flight completed June 15, 1919
1st solo nonstop: Capt. Charles Lindberg, Long Island to Paris. Flight completed May 21, 1927.
I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding here. Lindbergh was not the first to cross the Atlantic by plane, as you say. But there’s no fraud involved. His achievement was that he was the first to cross the Atlantic solo. So a pair of people, no matter what the circumstances, could not have beaten him, since they weren’t really solo, eh?
The actual terms of $25,000 Ortieg Pirze, the competition that Lindbergh won, was that the aviator(s) fly non-stop between New York and Paris (a much longer flight than just that across the Atlantic). Winning the prize did not require flying solo, although Lindbergh did so.
I take it the OP is referring to the disappearance of Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli during their attempted transatlantic flight in May 1927.
Actually, their attempt was of some significance as it would have been the first successful airplane crossing of the Atlantic from east to west, against the prevailing winds.
Lindbergh was actually the 92nd person to fly across the Atlantic, and his was the 14th flight. (Thirty-one of them were on the R-34 dirigible in 1919.)
(BTW SmackFu, happy 1000th :))
What people fail to remember is he did it with no radio, a few sandwiches, and was unable to look directly out of the front of the plane. He stayed up for around 36 hours if I recall correctly. He was pretty lucky, overall.
Maybe that’s why they called him “Lucky Lindy!”
But yes, he did it solo.
Yes, sort of. There was a fuel tank in front of the windshield, but a periscope was fitted. It didn’t matter though, because Lindbergh preferred to look out the side window.
33 hours, 30 minutes
Exactly.
A tough loss, too. Charles Nungesser was the third-ranking French ace (behind Fonk and Guynemer) of World War I with 45 confirmed victories, and a national hero of France.
I think that part of the French enthusiasm for Lucky Lindy’s unique achievement stemmed directly from the disappearance of Nungesser only two weeks before.
The observation of the OP at least made one other man a millionaire…Robert L. Ripley. Up to Lindy’s flight Ripley’s little feature “Believed It Or Not” never garnished much attention. Remember, the key word here is solo…
Certainly part of the successful launching of this book was due to the tremendous publicity generated by Ripley’s item a few months earlier which claimed that Charles Lindbergh was the 67th man to make a nonstop flight over the Atlantic. Nearly 175,000 irate letters and telegrams poured into Ripley’s Fr office, in defense of America’s aviator hero. But Ripley prevailed. Unknown to most of the world, a two man British airplane made the Atlantic crossing in 1919. and that same year, an English dirigible flew it with a crew of 31 men. In 1924 a German dirigible repeated the Atlantic flight with its crew of 33.
The tremendous success of the 1929 book prompted William Randolph Hearst to sign Ripley for his syndicated King Features which paid Rip a handsome $ 100,000 a year.
Paul Watkins’ novel “In the blue light of African dreams” is about just this subject (the OP specifically). One of my favourite books.
Lindy also went the previous 24+ hours without sleep, prior to the flight in which he needed to be very well rested.
I’ve heard that he was so tired that he was hallucinating at some points.
Lindy did it solo, he did it from NY to Paris. He also had the benefit of being an American who would benefit from the ability of the U.S. to spread the word and make it an international accomplishment with a huge national pride celebration.
He was a good ol’ boy.
how long did the flight take? 33 hours?
What makes the “solo” part important is that, when you had a team of pilots doing a trans-Atlantic flight, one could grab a few hours of sleep while the other flew.
Lindbergh’s accomplishment was real and amazing enough.
I caught the tail-end of a very sweet movie on cable last spring about a little girl who encounters the ghosts of Nungesser and Coli in the New England woods and helps them reconstruct their airplane so that they can “complete” their flight.
“Restless Spirits” (aka “Dead Aviators” - ain’t that sweet?) was set in Newfoundland, not New England. That appears to be the most likely prospect for the end of the flight of l’Oiseau Blanc.
The ghost plane in the flick looked suspiciously like a Stearman, and somehow it seemed to have grown back the landing gear that Nungesser and Coli had dropped after takeoff to lighten the load (they planned a belly skid landing).