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The Flight In 1919, a New York City hotel owner named Raymond Orteig offered 25,000 U.S. dollars to the first aviator to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. Several pilots were killed or injured while competing for the Orteig prize. By 1927, it had still not been won. Lindbergh believed he could win it if he had the right aeroplane. He persuaded nine St. Louis businessmen to help him finance the cost of a plane. Lindbergh chose Ryan Aeronautical Company of San Diego to manufacture a plane, which he helped design. He named it the Spirit of St. Louis. On May 10-11, 1927, Lindbergh tested the plane by flying from San Diego to New York City, with an overnight stop in St. Louis. The flight took 20 hours 21 minutes, a transcontinental record.
On May 20, Lindbergh took off in the Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field, near New York City, at 7:52 a.m. He landed at Le Bourget Field, near Paris, on May 21 at 10:21 p.m. Paris time. Thousands of cheering people met him. He had flown more than 5,790 kilometres in 331/2 hours. Lindbergh's heroic flight thrilled people throughout the world. He was honoured with awards, celebrations, and parades. President Calvin Coolidge gave Lindbergh the Congressional Medal of Honour and the first Distinguished Flying Cross medal in American history. In the years that followed, Lindbergh flew all over the United States helping to promote aviation. He also flew to Latin American countries on goodwill visits for the U.S. government. In Mexico, he met Anne Spencer Morrow, the daughter of Dwight Morrow, the U.S. ambassador there. Lindbergh married her in 1929. He taught her to fly, and together they flew on several expeditions, charting new routes for various United States airlines. The Kidnapping
On March 1, 1932, the Lindberghs' 20-month-old son, Charles Augustus, Jr., was kidnapped from the family home in New Jersey.The Lindberghs' son, Charles Jr., was then 20 months old, and they were expecting another child. On a chill, damp weekend in March, 1932, they planned to return Sunday to the home of Mrs. Lindbergh's parents, in the posh suburb of Englewood, NJ, 50 miles away. But young Charles had a cold and they decided to stay another night or two, accompanied by the child's nurse, Betty Gow, and a housekeeper couple. Except for them and the grandparents, it is presumed that no one else knew they were staying.Yet sometime between 8 and 10 PM on the night of Tuesday, March 1, the child was taken from his second-floor nursery by a kidnapper who left no fingerprints but did leave a note demanding $50,000 in ransom -- a fortune in those Depression times. Finding the baby was gone, Lindbergh searched the grounds, and called the State Police. The Township of East Amwell, where the Lindbergh house was located, had no local police then or now. Police and press descended on the scene, trampling what might have been left of a kidnapper's footprints in the mud and a light fall of snow. In addition to the ransom note, investigators found a discarded homemade ladder and a chisel near the house.
In the days and nights that followed, a desperate Lindbergh sought help from numerous negotiators who claimed to be go-betweens with the kidnapper. Thousands of letters poured into the estate, some expressing sympathy, some with ransom demands or death threats, and a host of psychic predictions. The newspapers initially speculated that gangsters had taken the child. Who else would have the gall to snatch the son of the Lone Eagle? Al Capone, the most notorious of them all, was so appalled at the thought, that he offered a $10,000 reward for information that would lead to the recovery of the child unharmed. Capone also said if he were released from his Chicago jail cell, he and his henchmen would find the perpetrator. A national debate ensued on whether or not to free Capone for the task. Speculation ended when the man who put Capone behind bars, IRS agent Elmer Irey, convinced Lindbergh that if released, Capone would immediately flee the country. One of many would-be go-betweens was Dr. John (Jafsie) Condon, a retired teacher who claimed to be in contact with the kidnapper. One night at a cemetery in the Bronx, accompanied by Lindbergh, Jafsie paid the ransom in gold certificates whose numbers had been recorded. The kidnapper gave Condon a note saying the child was on a boat off the Massachusetts coast. Lindbergh spent days flying over the area to no avail. Unknown to all, the body of little Charles Jr., dead of a skull fracture, lay in the leaves off the Hopewell-Princeton road, a few miles from the Lindberghs' home. On May 12, 1932, the tiny remains were discovered by a truck driver who entered the woods to relieve himself. It took more than two years of following the trail of passed ransom bills to track down the man accused of the murder, German-born Bronx carpenter, Bruno Richard Hauptmann who was convicted and executed in 1936. World War IIWhile in Europe, Lindbergh toured the aircraft industries of France and Germany. The highly advanced aviation industry of Nazi Germany impressed him greatly. In 1938, Lindbergh accepted a German medal of honour from the high-ranking Nazi official Hermann Goering. The incident caused an outcry in the United States among opponents of the Nazis. History Translate to German Translate to French |
