Charles Lindbergh was an American
aviator, one of the best known figures in aeronautical
history, remembered for the first nonstop solo flight
across the Atlantic, from New York to Paris, on May
20-21, 1927.
Lindbergh's early years were
spent chiefly in Little Falls, Minnesota, and in
Washington, D.C., where for 10 years his father
represented the 6th district of Minnesota in the
Congress. His formal education ended during his second
year at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. His
growing interest in aviation led to enrollment in a
flying school in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the purchase of a
World War I Curtiss Jenny, with which he made
stunt-flying tours through Southern and Midwestern
states. After a year at the army flying schools in Texas
(1924-25), he became an airmail pilot (1926), flying the
route from St. Louis, Mo., to Chicago. During this period
he obtained financial backing from a group of St. Louis
businessmen to compete for the $25,000 prize offered for
the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. In
the monoplane Spirit of St. Louis he made the night in 33
1/2 hours on May 20-21, 1927. Overnight Lindbergh became
a folk hero on both sides of the Atlantic and a
well-known figure in most of the world. There followed a
series of goodwill flights in Europe and America. 
In Mexico, Lindbergh met Anne
Morrow, daughter of the United States ambassador, Dwight
Morrow. They were married in May 1929. She served as
copilot and navigator for him on many flights, and
together they flew to many countries of the world. During
this period, Lindbergh acted as technical adviser to two
airlines, Transcontinental Air Transport and Pan American
Airways, personally pioneering many of their routes.
In March 1932 the Lindberghs'
two-year-old son, Charles Augustus, Jr., was kidnapped
from their home near Hopewell, N.J., and murdered. Partly
because of Lindbergh's worldwide popularity, this became
the most celebrated crime of the 1930s, and it was a
major subject of newspaper attention until April 1936,
when Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed after being
convicted of the kidnap-murder. The publicity was so
distasteful to the Lindberghs that they took refuge in
Europe. After 1936, when he visited German centres of
aviation, Lindbergh repeatedly warned against the growing
air power of Nazi Germany. His decoration by the German
government in 1938 led to considerable criticism, as did
the speeches advocating American neutrality in World War
II he made in 1940-41 after his return to the United
States. Criticism of his public statements by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt led Lindbergh to resign his Air
Corps Reserve commission in April 1941.
When the United States entered
the war, however, Lindbergh, as a civilian, threw him-
self into the war effort, serving as a consultant to the
Ford Motor Company and to the United Aircraft
Corporation. In the latter capacity he flew 50 combat
missions during a tour of duty in the Pacific; and later,
after the end of the war in Europe, he accompanied a navy
technical mission in Europe investigating German aviation
developments.
Following World War II,
Lindbergh and his family lived quietly in Connecticut and
then in Hawaii. He continued as consultant to Pan
American World Airways and to the U.S. Department of
Defense. He was a member of the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics and served on a number of other
aeronautical boards and committees. He received many
honours and awards, in addition to the Medal of Honor
that had been awarded to him by special act of Congress
in 1927. For his services to the government he was
appointed brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve by
President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954. His book The
Spirit of St. Louis. describing the flight to Paris, was
published in 1953 and gained him a Pulitzer Prize. He was
also the author of We (1927), Of Flight and Life(1948),
and, with the French surgeon and biologist Alexis Carrel,
The Culture of Organs(1938), concerning researches on
which he and Carrel had collaborated. His Wartime
Journals(1970) is a record of his life during the years
1938-45.
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