One Summer: America, 1927 (15 page)

That achievement alone makes him unquestionably a candidate for greatest pilot of his age, if not all ages. He was the only pilot that year to land where he said he would. All the other flights that summer—and there were many—either failed, made forced landings on water, or came down without knowing where they were. He seemed to think that flying straight to Le Bourget was the most normal thing in the world. For him, in fact, it was.

As Lindbergh covered the last leg from Cherbourg into Paris he had no idea that he was about to experience fame on a scale and intensity unlike any experienced by any human before.

It never occurred to him that many people would be waiting for him. He wondered if anyone at the airfield would speak English and if he would be in trouble for not having a French visa. His plan was, first, to see to it that his plane was stowed securely and, second, to cable his mother to give her the news that he had arrived. He supposed there would be one or two press interviews, assuming reporters worked that late in France. Then he would have to find a hotel somewhere. At some point he would also need to buy clothes and personal items because he hadn’t packed anything at all, not even a toothbrush.

A more immediate problem confronting him was that his map didn’t show Le Bourget. All he knew was that it was some seven miles northeast of the city and that it was big. After circling the Eiffel Tower, he headed in that direction, but the only possible site he could see was ringed with bright lights, as if it were some kind of industrial complex, with long tentacles of additional bright lights stretching out from it in all directions. This was nothing like the dozing airport he had expected to find. What he didn’t realize was that the activity was all for him; the sinuous tentacles of light were the headlights of tens of thousands of cars all spontaneously drawn to Le Bourget and now caught in the greatest traffic jam in Parisian history. Cars and trams were abandoned all along the roads to the airport.

At 10:22 p.m. Paris time—precisely 33 hours, 30 minutes, and 29.8
seconds after taking to the air, according to an official barograph that the National Aeronautic Association of America had bolted into the plane just before departure—the
Spirit of St. Louis
touched down on the grassy spaciousness of Le Bourget. In that instant, a pulse of joy swept around the earth. Within minutes the whole of America knew he was safe in Paris. Le Bourget was instantly a scene of exultant pandemonium as tens of thousands of people rushed across the airfield to Lindbergh’s plane—“a seething, howling mass of humanity … surging towards him from every direction of the compass,” in the words of one onlooker. An eight-foot-high chain-link fence that surrounded the field was flattened, and several bicycles were crushed under the mass of charging feet. Among those in the rush were the dancer Isadora Duncan (who would die four months later in a freak accident, strangled when the long scarf she was wearing got caught in the wheel of a car) and the tennis player Jean Borotra, who with Jacques Brugnon had beaten Bill Tilden and Francis T. Hunter at Saint-Cloud that day.

For Lindbergh, this was an entirely alarming circumstance, as he was trapped and in actual danger of being pulled to pieces. The throngs hauled him from his cockpit and began to carry him off like prize booty. “I found myself lying in a prostrate position, up on top of the crowd, in the center of an ocean of heads that extended as far out into the darkness as I could see,” he reported. “It was like drowning in a human sea.” Someone yanked his leather flight helmet from his head and others, worryingly, began to pull at his clothes. Behind him, to his greater alarm, his beloved plane was being ruined by the swarms climbing over it. “I heard the crack of wood behind me when someone leaned too heavily against a fairing strip,” he wrote. “Then a second strip snapped, and a third, and there was the sound of tearing fabric.” Souvenir hunters, he realized, were going wild.

Somehow in the confusion he found himself on his feet and the crowd moving past him. Miraculously, in the poor light their focus switched to a hapless American who bore a passing resemblance to Lindbergh, and they now carried him off, wriggling and protesting vehemently. A few minutes later, officials in the airport commandant’s office were startled
by the sound of breaking glass and the sight of the unfortunate victim being passed through the window to them. Wild-eyed and bedraggled, the new arrival was missing his coat, his belt, his necktie, one shoe, and about half his shirt; a good deal of the rest of his clothing hung from him in shreds. He looked rather like the survivor of a mining disaster. He told the bemused officials that his name was Harry Wheeler and that he was a furrier from the Bronx. He had come to Paris to buy rabbit pelts and had been drawn to Le Bourget by the same impulse that had attracted much of the rest of Paris. Now he just wanted to go home.

Lindbergh, meanwhile, was rescued by two French aviators who conducted him to the official reception area. There he met Myron Herrick and Herrick’s son, Parmely, and daughter-in-law, Agnes. They gave Lindbergh a few minutes to catch his breath and assured him that his plane would be made safe. It took some hours for Lindbergh and the Herrick party to make their way through the congested streets to the ambassador’s residence on the avenue d’Iéna in central Paris. There Lindbergh declined the offer of a medical examination but gratefully accepted a glass of milk and a little food, followed by a brief hot bath.

By now Lindbergh had been up for over sixty hours, but he agreed to meet with reporters who had collected outside the residence. Parmely Herrick showed them in. Though Lindbergh was clearly very tired, he chatted genially with them for several minutes. He told them that he had fought sleet and snow for a thousand miles; sometimes he flew as low as ten feet, sometimes as high as ten thousand. Then, in a pair of pajamas borrowed from Parmely, he crawled into bed. It was 4:15 a.m.

The most famous man on earth closed his eyes and slept for ten hours.

*
Casts in the 1920s could be enormous. A Max Reinhardt production of 1924,
The Miracle
, had a cast of 700.

7

It was daytime in America. The news of Lindbergh’s arrival was known all over within minutes. Horns sounded, sirens blared, church bells rang. From end to end the nation erupted in the kind of jubilant cacophony made when wars end.

Newspapers struggled to find words adequate to Lindbergh’s superlative achievement. The
New York Evening World
called it “the greatest feat of a solitary man in the records of the human race.” Another called it “the greatest event since the Resurrection.” According to the
North American Review
, the earth reverberated with “the long-waiting joy of humanity at the coming of the first citizen of the world, the first human being truly entitled to give his address as ‘The Earth,’ the first Ambassador-at-Large to Creation.” In terms of rhetoric and emotion, this was a Second Coming.

The
New York Times
gave Lindbergh’s flight the whole of the first four pages of the paper even though there was little more to say than that he had made it. In the first four days after the landing, American newspapers ran an estimated 250,000 stories, totaling 36 million words, on Lindbergh and his flight. Unsuspecting of just how much attention he would get, Lindbergh had subscribed to a newspaper-clipping service, with the articles to be sent to his mother, who discovered to her horror
that a fleet of trucks was preparing to deliver to her several tons of newspaper articles by the end of the first week.

A kind of mania swept the nation. Proposals were put forward to exempt Lindbergh for life from paying taxes, to name a star or planet after him, to install him in the cabinet as permanent head of a new aviation department, and to make May 21 a national holiday. He was given a lifetime pass to all major league baseball games everywhere. In Minnesota a proposal was made to rename the state Lindberghia.

President Coolidge announced that June 11 would be Lindbergh Day in America—the highest tribute ever paid to a private citizen by the nation. The post office rushed out special airmail stamps—the first time a living person had been so honored.

Parks were named after him, children were named after him, streets and mountains, hospital wards, zoo animals, rivers, high schools, and bridges—all were named after him. In Chicago, plans were announced to erect a 1,328-foot-high commemorative Lindbergh beacon with a beam that could be seen three hundred miles away.

More than 3.5 million letters were sent to Lindbergh—primarily from females, it was noted—along with 15,000 parcels containing gifts and mementoes. Many of his correspondents included return postage—about $100,000 worth altogether, it was estimated—in the patently deluded hope that he would find time to reply. Western Union received so many messages that it had to assign thirty-eight employees full-time to manage them all. One message from Minneapolis contained 15,000 words of text, held 17,000 signatures, and stretched 520 feet when unfurled. For the less imaginative, Western Union offered twenty prewritten forms of congratulatory message that people could choose from. Thousands did.

In Hollywood, a young cartoonist named Walt Disney was inspired to create an animated short feature called “Plane Crazy” featuring a mouse who was also a pilot. The mouse was initially called Oswald but soon assumed a more lasting place in the nation’s hearts as Mickey. Robert Ripley, author of the syndicated
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
newspaper feature, received two hundred thousand furious letters and telegrams
after he ungraciously pointed out that sixty-seven people had crossed the ocean by air before Lindbergh did. (Mostly in dirigibles. A later, more careful count showed that the number was actually closer to 120.)

At least 250 popular songs were written for Lindbergh and his flight. The most popular was “Lucky Lindy”—a term he hated—and was often played at dinners he attended, “much to my embarrassment and annoyance,” he later recorded. The Lindbergh hop became a popular dance—ironically since the virginal Lindbergh had never danced with a girl.

Meanwhile in Paris, the delirium was no less intense. At Le Bourget on the morning after Lindbergh’s arrival, cleaners gathered more than a ton of lost property, including six sets of dentures. Under Herrick’s benign tutelage Lindbergh did everything right. Stepping onto the embassy balcony to greet the crowds after rising on his first full day in France, he waved a French flag, inducing delirious joy in the uncountable thousands who thronged the street below. Then he and Herrick visited Nungesser’s widowed mother in her tiny sixth-floor flat on the boulevard du Temple near the place de la République. It was two weeks to the day since the disappearance of her son. Although the visit was not publicly announced, ten thousand people filled the street for Lindbergh’s arrival. Also on that busy first day, Lindbergh called home on the new transatlantic telephone line (becoming one of the first private individuals to speak across the Atlantic as well as to fly it) and visited sick soldiers at Les Invalides.

In the days that followed, he went to the Élysée Palace to receive the Légion d’Honneur from President Gaston Doumergue—the first time a French president had personally bestowed the nation’s highest honor on an American—addressed the Chamber of Deputies, was feted by the Aéro Club de France, appeared in a parade witnessed by up to a million people, and received the key to the city at the Hôtel de Ville. Whenever he spoke, it was with modesty and aplomb, and he never missed an opportunity to praise the accomplishments of French aviation or the kindness
of the French generally. His achievement, he made clear, was merely a small part of a large collective effort. In weepy joy, France clasped Lindbergh to its bosom. They called him “le boy.”

No foreign visitor to France had ever been so extravagantly honored. The American flag was hoisted over the Quai d’Orsay, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—the first time Old Glory had ever flown over that hallowed building. A striking feature of Lindbergh throughout this busy period was his appearance. Everything Lindbergh wore over the next few days was borrowed—and not too many people had clothes that would fit on such a tall and lanky frame. Though reporters were too tactful or overawed to remark on it, it was obvious that Lindbergh was going about Paris in jackets that fell short on his wrists and trousers that didn’t reach his shoes.

Five days after his flight, crowds of a million people still lined the streets wherever he went. He smiled a good deal in those early days and waved whenever a crowd greeted him. That wouldn’t last.

On Thursday, May 26, Lindbergh went to Le Bourget to check on his plane. It had been heavily damaged by the happy crowds but was now being painstakingly repaired. While he was at the airfield, Lindbergh borrowed a French Nieuport fighter plane and took it up for a spin. Although Lindbergh had never flown a Nieuport and could not be sure of its tolerances, he proceeded to execute a series of loops, rolls, corkscrews, barrel turns, and other aerial acrobatics. French officials watched in something like stupefaction as the most esteemed and treasured human being on earth swooped and rolled in the sky above them, pushing to its limits a plane he knew nothing about. With frantic gestures and much hopping they implored him to cease these dangerous maneuvers and return to earth. Eventually, good-naturedly, Lindbergh did. It was an arresting demonstration of the proposition that Lindbergh was very possibly both the best and luckiest pilot who ever lived.

Lindbergh’s plan was to make a tour of Europe—he particularly wished to visit Sweden, land of his fathers—and then fly back to America. He was still undecided as to whether he would attempt a risky return crossing of the Atlantic against the prevailing winds or whether he should continue east, flying home across Asia and the north Pacific. In
fact, Herrick informed him, he would do neither. President Coolidge had dispatched a naval cruiser, the USS
Memphis
, to bring him home so that America could honor him in person and in style. The president wanted to get the ceremonies over with so that he could start a vacation trip to the Black Hills.