The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh (28 page)

Below, upon the mountainous sea, the endless breakers rolled but their whitecaps were fewer, meaning there would be less wind drift. There were also patches of fog above the waves, and patches of clouds in the sky, but he could pick his way in between them.

Fatigue returned in the form of mirages. A green, rocky coast appeared—an island where none was supposed to be. An entire coastline came into view, complete with spruce trees lining its bluffs. It was so realistic Lindbergh even dived down to investigate, but then it all went
poof
in his face. If these hallucinations continued, how was he to recognize the real thing when he came upon it? He kept shaking his head and sticking it out the window and stamping his feet to keep awake, but that wasn’t working as well as it had before. He tried playing mind games, calculating the math of how far he had flown, and how far was left, which resulted only in paroxysms of confusion.

Lindbergh’s mind began to drift between unconsciousness and a sort of living stupor; he was staying awake only moment by moment now. Small tasks broke this phase: spreading the chart on his knees, checking navigation, cupping a hand out the window to direct a flow of cool air on his face. After a period of complex calculation he came up with the disagreeable possibility that he could be some 440 miles south of his intended landfall in Ireland.

The morning turned to afternoon as Lindbergh and
Spirit
droned on. The skies were fairly clear now, and he had become remarkably accustomed to the fatigue, the terrible sleepiness, almost automatically catching himself whenever he drifted off. In the water below he saw porpoises, then gulls wheeling above them—signs of the coast? Sunbeams danced in the cockpit and he began to expect to see the coastline any time. He needed to make landfall before dark, otherwise he wouldn’t know where he struck the coast, or where to look for mountains. It would be difficult to tell the cities in the dark only by their lights—he thought he could tell London, though, because of its size. One thing for sure, he was a long way from Peoria.

Suddenly, in the distance, a small, black dot. A boat! More than one, actually. He dropped down and flew toward them. The fishing boats seemed to blanket him in security for he wasn’t alone anymore. But when Lindbergh circled the first boat about fifty feet above no humans appeared. Maybe they were afraid of him, he thought. He went to the next boat and circled but no one came on deck there either.

Then, bizarrely, a man stuck his head through a porthole and gawked up at him. The man’s face was pale—or at least it seemed so to Lindbergh. He circled the boat three times and each time the man’s head remained motionless through the porthole, discombobulated, peering up at him, as in a tableau.

Lindbergh shut down his throttle and shouted: “
WHICH WAY IS IRELAND
?”

He received no response to this from the head in the porthole. It might be he speaks no English. But if this was the Irish coast, then it stood to reason the man was likely Irish. Maybe he was too stupefied to answer. Or maybe he was a Portuguese fisherman, or Norwegian. He flew on. If he’d navigated himself this far across the Atlantic, Lindbergh figured, he didn’t need to stop and ask for directions.

The skies clouded up again. About three o’clock in the afternoon he saw a long shape ahead. He was flying only a hundred feet above the water but it looked like a coastline. After so many illusions Lindbergh took it with a grain of salt, but he climbed a thousand feet for a better look. Slowly, like a time-lapse photograph, the coastline materialized before him—barren islands, bays, rocky fingers of land, inlets, low rounded mountains, green fields. He checked the map on his knees. Dingle Bay and Valentia fit snugly, as in a jigsaw puzzle. Lindbergh had struck the southwest coast of Ireland where, as usual, it was raining. But he was right where he wanted to be, and two hours ahead of schedule! Through all the storms, the spoiling winds and fog, the crude instruments of navigation, sleep deprivation, uncertainties, fears, phantoms, mirages, and haunted heads, if this wasn’t a miracle it ought to be.

T
HERE WERE VILLAGES BETWEEN
the rock-ledged fields where sheep and cattle grazed. People rushed out of their houses at the first buzz of his plane, waving up at him. Lindbergh began to experience some kind of epiphany, brought on by the knowledge that he had crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He suddenly realized, and felt ashamed, at all the things he’d taken for granted in life. The mass of waving, friendly, welcoming people below had caused him to repent that. This, in turn, created such mental turmoil that he actually found himself flying once more over the ocean and believed he was having another hallucination—until he realized that in the excitement he’d completely turned around and was going exactly the wrong way, back in the direction he’d come from. He reversed his course and flew on.

He passed over the St. George’s Channel to strike the English coast along the great cliffs at Cornwall, his mind swelling at the prospects of aviation now that the Atlantic has been crossed. Larger, faster, safer planes will soon come, carrying loads of passengers, freight, and mail between continents, opening up new vistas, new opportunities, new alliances. The possibilities seemed limitless. It’s just a matter of time. He calculated that because of the tailwind that had carried him a full two hours ahead of schedule, he might even have enough fuel left over to reach Rome instead of Paris! What a coup that would be, he thought. Imagine their faces back in St. Louis when he wired them from Rome! Rome! And then …
crump!
A sinister shudder in the engine spelled trouble, freezing Lindbergh in place—a great
cough
as the engine strained against its motor mounts, and then another … He was out of gas! The nose dropped down, he began losing altitude, the engine wheezed and knocked. He’d forgotten to switch over from the nose tank, which ran dry. A quick turn of the switch to the right wing tank and a few pulls on the hand pump got the engine running smoothly again and put him back on course. It seemed there was always some little thing like that to stir up excitement.

Lindbergh’s first sensation about England was how
small
it seemed. He was across the southern part in no time, he thought, and then over the English Channel, which at that point was eighty-five miles wide to the coast of France. He struck it in the last rosy gleam of sunset, at the same place near where the unfortunate Nungesser and Coli had crossed over on their fatal flight two weeks earlier. Having experienced the trial of the Atlantic firsthand, Lindbergh couldn’t help but wonder how they died.

He folded the Mercator projection for the final time and put it away. There was no more water to cross. Below was Cherbourg, and the Norman coast, and Lindbergh felt he could relax somewhat. The worst was certainly over. With no more fog angst, phantoms, navigation nightmares, crosswinds, storms, or mirages to bedevil him, his mind drifted to practical matters, such as what would he actually
do
once he landed in Paris at Le Bourget airport. He wondered if there would be anyone there to meet him since he was two hours ahead of schedule. He didn’t speak a
mot
of French and had even neglected to get a visa, which could mean trouble with the authorities. Where would he
sleep?
Where would he
eat?
Would anything be open?

Tomorrow, for one thing, he would need to buy a suit of clothes; there would be reporters to contend with, and photographers. They would want to see the
Spirit of St. Louis
. “That will be fun,” he said. “I like showing off the plane.” For another, he’d have to find a telegraph office where someone spoke English and send a wire informing his people back in St. Louis that he’d arrived.

What he didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that after tonight, for the rest of his life, he would
never
have to inform anyone that Lindbergh had arrived.

T
HE
F
RENCH FARM FIELDS
, Lindbergh reported with some relief, were larger than those of Ireland and England, with plenty of places “where I could land in emergency without cracking up.” Otherwise, his reception was the same: people rushing out of their houses in the dim twilight and waving up at him, “looking as though they had jumped up from the supper table.” Which reminded him, it was 9:20 p.m., Paris time, and he was hungry and grabbed a sandwich. He started to fling the paper wrapping out the window but stopped himself. “I don’t want the litter from a sandwich to symbolize my first contact with France,” Lindbergh said.

He flew on toward Paris, a hundred miles ahead, following the Seine, over the winking lights of villages, towns, and cities, until he spied one of the bright air navigation beacons set up by the French to guide aircraft after dark. He followed the beacons right into Paris, which appeared, he said, as “a patch of starlit earth under a starlit sky.” Soon the city itself took shape, with buildings, parks, and avenues seeming to radiate from a gigantic pillar lit by thousands of electric lights, which Lindbergh recognized immediately as the Eiffel Tower. All sense of sleepiness had vanished now. He felt as if he could fly another three thousand miles.

Le Bourget airport was just northeast of the city, so he circled the Eiffel Tower once and headed that way. There were no beacons or searchlights but he did see a large semidarkened space that could have been an airport, yet it seemed surrounded by a factory with hundreds of lighted windows. He dropped down to investigate, only to discover it wasn’t a factory but thousands of automobiles that appeared stuck in some kind of traffic jam. Only half of the grass runway was lit, Lindbergh noted—at least he
hoped
that was the case; if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be long enough to land on. Spiraling down three times, he sized up the field and began his approach—there were no visible obstructions—and he cut his speed at half throttle, still worried about what might lie in the unlit part of the runway.

The airspeed indicator read 90 miles per hour—way too fast—but the plane felt as if it might stall. He closed the throttle, which set the engine to idling, and timed his descent to touch down not far beyond the hangars. He’d never landed
Spirit
at night before and was arrested by conflicting instincts—too high, too fast; too low, too slow. He started to do a touch-and-go and reached for the throttle, then just as quickly decided against it, and in another instant he was on the ground, just like that. After thirty-four hours and thirty-six hundred miles in the air, Lindbergh was bumping along toward he knew not what in the darkened part of the runway. “What” turned out to be perfectly good grass, and Lindbergh let himself roll to a solid stop on terra firma before turning to taxi back toward the hangars. That was when he saw the crowd, or mob, and they saw him, more than a hundred thousand of them, men, women, and children, rushing toward him screaming things in French, of which the only thing he understood was his name.

It was suddenly startling, then terrifying, not the least because these people seemed to be rushing toward certain decapitation by his spinning propeller. Now, wouldn’t that be a fine spectacle upon his arrival in Paris? Lindbergh’s flight had been tracked from Nova Scotia to Ireland, to England, and across the French coast. By the time he put down in Paris the media had turned his arrival into a frenzied carnival of celebration and adulation. The police and aviation authorities, fearing such a demonstration, had contained the crowd behind steel fences, but they broke through them anyway and rushed the field.

Lindbergh, still inside the cockpit, could feel the stiff fabric skin of the plane begin to crack as the mob surged against the fuselage. He opened the door and stepped out on the wing to try to reason with them, but he was seized by frantic hands and carried around and around on people’s shoulders, who were all the while shouting and screaming in an incomprehensible babble. It went on that way nearly half an hour, with Lindbergh at times fearing for his life—that he might be smothered or trampled to death. He shouted in English if there were any mechanics around but his pleas were consumed by the din.

Someone suddenly jerked his leather flying helmet off, and just as suddenly he found himself on his feet—on French soil at last! Friendly, firm hands gripped his arms and steered him out of the crowd. It turned out that two savvy French pilots had seen his distress and intervened. It had been they who took his flying helmet and jammed it on the head of an unsuspecting bystander, shouting and pointing, “Here is Lindbergh!” And soon enough that hapless man was hoisted up and trundled around the field as Lindbergh had been before him.

They took Lindbergh to a hangar where there was a private room and asked what he needed—food, drink, doctor, bathroom? Lindbergh told them he was fine but embarrassed that he had neglected to bring a visa. Would there be trouble? They only laughed at him. He asked if there was any news of Nungesser and Coli. The pilots shook their heads sadly.

Presently the proud U.S. ambassador to France, Myron T. Herrick, appeared with congratulations and offers of assistance. He would have come sooner, he said, but had been delayed when the bystander wearing Lindbergh’s flying helmet had been presented to him as the real McCoy, and by the time that was straightened out the crowd had once more gone berserk.

The ambassador wanted Lindbergh to come with him to stay at the American embassy, but Lindbergh wanted to see his plane. He feared for the damage it had suffered. Reluctantly, they took him to the hangar in which the
Spirit of St. Louis
had been placed under lock and key and guarded by armed soldiers. Lindbergh was appalled at the sight. The crowd had gouged holes in the fuselage fabric and jerked small parts off of the engine as souvenirs, but on closer examination it appeared that no serious damage had been done. It was mostly cosmetic and the plane would be good as new by tomorrow afternoon. The French would gladly see to that.

The pilots drove Lindbergh to the embassy by side roads to avoid the traffic but turned back down the Champs-Élysées and came to a halt beneath the Arc de Triomphe, which contained the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of France in the Great War. Lindbergh did not know this, and didn’t understand what the pilots were saying, but he did recognize that this place was important to them.