The Spirit of ST Louis (58 page)

THE THIRTY-FIRST HOUR
Over England
HOURS OF FUEL CONSUMED
NOSE TANK

¼ + 1-1-1-1-1 1-1-1

LEFT WING CENTER WING RIGHT WING

¼ + 1-1-1 ¼ + ¼ + 1-1-1

FUSELAGE

One fifty-two p.m., Eastern daylight time. Almost thirty-three hundred miles from New York. The twenty-ninth score goes up on the instrument board.

Cornwall is more populated and prosperous than Ireland, and less rugged. How foreign -- how different from America it is, with its neat, miniature farms all divided off by hedge and stone fences, and its narrow, sod-walled roads running crookedly between slate-roofed villages! How can a farmer make his living from fields so small? He'd barely get started with a plow before the hedge at the far end would turn him back. No wonder there are so many one-horse carts. It wouldn't pay to buy modern machinery for such acreage. A hundred of these fields would fit into a single Kansas wheat ranch.

It was from such farms and villages as these that Englishmen set out to build a new life in America. The men and women down below are children of those who stayed at home, still carrying on the traditions of our forefathers. I'm a child of those who left -- flying back three generations later. Most of my mother's forebears came from England. Early Lands and Lodges were subjects of the King. How strange it is to realize that this ground below me is ruled by a monarch.

Lodge family legend brings an ancestor to England in the train of William the Conqueror. We know next to nothing about the British generations. But my great-great-grandfather, William Gibbon Lodge, sailed to America soon after the War of 1812. He became a lawyer in New York. Our written records begin with his wife, Harriet Clubb, of Tunbridge, Kent. She had reservations in regard to Americans, if one judges from entries in her diary: "We walked about in the Battery Gardens," she wrote, soon after arriving in this country, "and had a sight of the fireworks as well as a good look of the American ladies, who are anything but pretty. They are small women without hips, lanky, scraggy, pale, and Lantern Jaw'd and rather prudish looking. At any rate they look very modest. Nature does not appear to have done so much for them as for the vegetation which is luxuriant in the extreme. The men are likewise far from being so good looking or gentlemanly as the English." How often our family has laughed over that paragraph!

Well, now it's
my
turn to get a first impression of the
English
. I drop down to five hundred feet. People raise their heads as I fly over them. What do they think when they see my plane? Do any of them realize I've flown across the Atlantic Ocean, or do they regard me as simply a British pilot on a local flight? Do they know they're looking at the Spirit of St. Louis -- a plane which has traveled from the United States to England in thirty hours? But even if they heard of my take-off from their local radio or press, they wouldn't expect me to fly through their particular sky, or think I could have made the trip so soon.

Inland hills are higher, and air becomes slightly turbulent again. To the north, real mountains rise halfway to clouds. A mellow country, it seems, in the long shadows and soft light of late afternoon. The sun is setting slowly, but it's probably a full hour above the horizon. English daylight is long in the month of May. I'll reach the coast of France by darkness. It's only another hour's flight. One more hour to the coast of France!

There's the English Channel already -- shore line darkening against pale gray of distant water. It's through this very channel that the Spanish Armada sailed. And all around me, just as tangible and real and earthlike as the states in America, are the countries of Europe. They're no longer colored portions of a paper map, no longer at the end of a rainbow. The Channel coast of England is gliding range ahead; the coast of France, an hour's flight beyond. Memories of school texts and childhood stories flood my mind. These are the countries of Robin Hood and King Arthur, of Henry the Eighth and the Redcoats, of Joan of Arc and Lafayette and Napoleon. Farther up this Channel, where it narrows down near Dover, Bleriot made his famous flight. And somewhere beyond that lies the hill from which Lilienthal launched himself on early wings.

I've crossed England so quickly! It seems so small! -- in keeping with the miniature farms below. Why, I'll be over the sea again within twenty minutes of the time I struck the Atlantic Cornish coast! Of course it's really the tip of England I'm crossing, the narrow peninsula that runs down to Land's End and the Scilly Islands. But it's only three hours since I sighted Ireland, and now I'm about to leave England behind. I can't accustom myself to the short distances of the Old World. I look down at my map. All England is no larger than one of our Midwestern states.

There, on my left, is Plymouth, and the same harbor from which the Mayflower once sailed, against weeks of adverse winds and hardships. Yesterday, I flew almost over Plymouth Rock, on the coast of Massachusetts. Today, my course takes me above the mother city in England—a gray city, curving around its ship-filled harbor, smoke from its chimneys drifting leisurely along my line of flight; a low city compared to the steel-skeletoned skyscrapers we build in America. Beyond, the green, indented, rolling coast parallels my course for another thirty miles.

Only three hundred miles to Paris. The horizon is sharpening, and the sky ahead is clear.

From Start Point of England to Cape de la Hague of France is eighty-five miles. In the past, I would have approached an eighty-five mile flight over water, in a land plane, with trepidation. It would have appeared a hazardous undertaking. This evening, it's just part of the downhill glide to Paris. Why, I should be able to paddle halfway across the Channel with my hands if I were forced down. What's eighty-five miles in contrast to an ocean -- or to that space above the clouds at night? It's not even as long as the little bay of water between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia. It's less than that short hop across the ice fields between Cape Breton Island and Newfoundland. And here the ocean is no wilderness; it's a populated country, filled with ships. Dozens of them ply back and forth along the coast -- fishing smacks to ocean liners -- dots all over the surface, as far as I can see. Probably some of them have come from New York, too; churning through the water for days to make their crossing.

How safe the people on those ships have been, but how little they know the air and ocean! Security and luxury shield one off from life. You never see the sky until you've looked upward to the stars for safety. You never feel the air until you've been shaken by its storms. You can never understand the ocean until you've been alone in its solitude. To appreciate fully, you must have intercourse with the elements themselves, know their whims, their beauties, their dangers. Then, every tissue of your being sees and feels, then body, mind, and spirit are as one.

The men who sailed in open boats a thousand years ago -- they knew. They were at the mercy of the storm wind. They felt the wet, salty closeness of the ocean. They hadn't bought tickets under colored posters, or been assured return from voyage started. But for the passengers on those liners down below, life is insulated; and the senses are dulled by the very luxuries they pay for. Storms and fog and freezing gales may hold them back a day in reaching port; that's all. A high sea simply means closed portholes and less pleasantness in eating, sleeping, and walking. Only in some rare instance, in some extreme and unforeseen condition, would an emergency open life to view. For them, this evening's sky is simply picturesque and clear; how can they know it forms an archway in the air to France and Paris?

Haze slowly covers up the Channel coast behind. Only a few ships are left in sight. There are none ahead. I start climbing – – – to one thousand – – – to two thousand feet. The sun behind me is low, only a few diameters above the horizon. This is the last water, this little strip of ocean. In less than half an hour I'll be in sight of France.

THE THIRTY-SECOND HOUR
Over the English Channel

HOURS OF FUEL CONSUMED
NOSE TANK

¼ + 1-1-1-1-1 1-1-1

LEFT WING CENTER WING RIGHT WING

¼ + 1-1-1 ¼ + ¼ + 1-1-1

FUSELAGE

A strip of land, ten miles or so in width, dents the horizon -- Cape de la Hague. The coast of France! It comes like an outstretched hand to meet me, glowing in the light of sunset. From this very coast, thirteen days ago, Nungesser and Coll set out for the westward flight across the ocean. They took off from Le Bourget, where I am soon to land. How far did they fly? Why were they lost? Was it engine failure, storm, or fuel shortage? Were they caught at night in a mountainous cloud of ice? Could they have flown off through starlit passageways, and lost the thread of earth entirely? Or are they still alive, somewhere in the wilderness of North America? They too rode on a magic carpet, but somehow the magic was lost.

Yes, aviation has great power, but how fragile are its wings! When all goes well in flying, one can soar through the sky like a god, letting the planet turn below—remaining aloof or partaking of its life as one desires. But how slight an error can bring one tumbling down; how minute are the pitfalls of the air—a microscopic flaw in a fitting, a few crystals of ice in a venturi tube, the lack of an hour's -sleep.

The sun almost touches the horizon as I look down on the city of Cherbourg, embracing its little harbor. Here is France, two thousand feet underneath my wing. After three thousand, four hundred miles of flying, I'm over the country of my destination. I've made the first nonstop airplane flight between the continents of America and Europe. There'll not be another night above the clouds. There's no longer any question of turning back across the water. No matter what happens now, I'll land in France. It's only two hundred miles to Paris, and half of that will be in twilight.

I slip my Mercator's projection into its pocket for the last time, and draw out the map of France. Ahead, the sky is clear. On my left, several ships punctuate the sea. On my right, smoke from little factory chimneys points toward Paris. My route passes over ten or fifteen miles of land and then parallels the coast of Normandy to Deauville.

Hitherto, I haven't dared plan beyond landing on Le Bourget, as though in a sense that were the end of life itself. Now, time stretches on again. There are days and weeks and years ahead.

What will I do after I land at Le Bourget? First, of course, I'll get the Spirit of St. Louis put away in some hangar. Then, I'll send a cable home, giving my time of landing. The speed I've made will surprise everyone back there -- nearly three hours ahead of schedule -- an average of more than a hundred miles an hour all the way from New York to Paris. After that, I'll find some place to spend the night. Everything else can go until morning.

These arrangements would be simple enough back home. They'll be more difficult in a foreign country -- in France, when I don't speak a word of French. I didn't get a visa before I took off -- I wonder how much trouble that will cause. I'm so far ahead of schedule that I may not find anybody waiting for me on the field. But one of the pilots or mechanics will probably speak a little English.

The first two or three days will be taken up by routine arrangements and meetings. There'll be newspaper interviews and photographs to get over with. And a lot of people will come out to the airport to see the Spirit of St. Louis. That will be fun. I like showing off the plane. In between times, I'll check over the engine and measure the fuel. I'll have to buy a new suit of clothes, and a half-dozen odds and ends. I haven't brought even a toothbrush or an extra shirt with me. Later on, I'll take a day or two off to walk through the streets and buildings of Paris.

Possibly I can made a flying tour through other European countries. Why not? It wouldn't be very expensive -- mostly hotel bills and gasoline and oil. Aside from a routine inspection and a few minor adjustments, my engine ought to be good for thousands of miles of flying. It shouldn't even need a top overhaul for two or three hundred hours. That's enough to take me the rest of the way around the world!

People over here will surely want to see the plane that's flown nonstop all the way from the United States to France. I can probably get permission to land wherever I want to go. I could fly to England, spend a day or two at London, and then hop over to Ireland -- something draws me back to those green fields and boulders. I might go up to Scotland. I glance down at the chart. For the Spirit of St. Louis, Glasgow and Dublin are only two hours' flight apart. I could visit Sweden and Denmark and Norway, and stop off in Germany on the way. After that, there's still Russia -- and Italy and Spain and Africa, and all those Balkan countries. Why hurry back home? New adventures open endlessly ahead. There's nothing I can't do with the Spirit of St. Louis. It's truly a magic carpet, as though it came directly out of the tale of the Arabian Nights to take me anywhere at all. When I'm ready to leave Europe, I can step into its cockpit again and fly on around the world, through Egypt, and India, and China until I reach the West by flying east. There's no place on earth I can't go.

As a matter of fact, how will I return home? Why not fly on around the world? The scarcity of airports in Asia is no problem for a plane that can fly four thousand miles nonstop. If I crossed the Pacific in the north, between Siberia and Alaska, I probably wouldn't ever need to take off with ore than a half load of fuel. And what if there are no airports in some places where I'd want to land? Haven't I barnstormed for weeks at a time without seeing an airport? Flying on around the world would show again what modern airplanes can accomplish. Besides, it's beneath the dignity the Spirit of St. Louis to return to the United States on board a boat. Rather than that, I'll make the westward flight back over the route I've just followed. There'd be head winds, f course, flying westward, and the danger of striking fog over Newfoundland and Canada. But I could take off from Ireland instead of France. That would cut down the distance back by almost six hundred miles. If I started from Ireland, might fly all the way to St. Louis nonstop. It would be great to take off from Europe one day and land at home, on Lambert Field, the next. I can see the pilots and mechanics running up to my plane.

"Where did you come from?"

"I came from Ireland."

"From Ireland -- when did you leave?"

"I left yesterday."