Charles Lindbergh

For the U.S. Representative from Minnesota (1859 – 1924), see Charles August Lindbergh.

For Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Junior, see Lindbergh kidnapping.

For the Iwo Jima veteran, see Charles W. Lindberg.

Charles A. Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh with the Spirit of St. Louis 1927
Born	(1902-02-04)4 February 1902 Detroit, Michigan
Died	26 August 1974(1974-08-26) (aged 72) Kipahulu, Maui, Hawaii
Occupation(s)	Aviator, author, inventor, explorer
Spouse	Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Children	By Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. Jon Lindbergh Land Morrow Lindbergh Anne Spencer Lindbergh (Perrin) Scott Lindbergh Reeve Lindbergh (Brown) By Brigitte Hesshaimer: Dyrk Hesshaimer Astrid Hesshaimer Bouteuil David Hesshaimer By Marietta Hesshaimer: Vago Hesshaimer Christoph Hesshaimer.
Parent(s)	Charles August Lindbergh Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4 1902 – August 26 1974) (aka "Lucky Lindy"; "The Lone Eagle") was an American aviator who, in May 1927, achieved virtually instantaneous world fame as the solo pilot of the first non-stop Transatlantic flight from New York (Roosevelt Field, Long Island) to Paris (Le Bourget Field) flying the single seat, single engine aircraft Spirit of St. Louis.

While in the decade prior to U.S. entrance in World War II Lindbergh was a fervent isolationist and a leader in the America First movement which advocated keeping the U.S. out of the world conflict, he nevertheless flew combat missions in the Pacific Theater as a civilian consultant after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In his later years, Lindbergh took an active role in the environmental movement.

Charles Lindbergh is a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

Early years

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4 1902, as the only child of Charles August Lindbergh (1859-1924), a Swedish immigrant (birth name Carl Månsson), lawyer, and U.S. Congressman (R-MN 6th) from 1907 to 1917 who opposed the entry of the U.S. into World War I, and Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh (1876-1954), a native of Detroit who was of English, French, and Irish descent. Mrs. Lindbergh was a teacher at Cass Technical High School in Detroit and later at Little Falls (MN) High School from which her son graduated in 1918. The Lindberghs divorced in 1909 when Charles was seven.

Early aviation career

1917 Saxon Six

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Graduation photo of 2nd Lt. Charles A. Lindbergh, USASRC, March, 1925

Lindbergh expressed an early interest in machinery beginning with his family's Saxon "Six" automobile, later his own Excelsior motorbike, and finally in aircraft.

In 1920, "Slim", as he was known by his friends, enrolled as a mechanical engineering student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison but dropped out in February, 1922, and soon thereafter joined a pilot and mechanics training program at Nebraska Standard Aircraft Corporation in Lincoln, Nebraska. He went up in an aircraft there for the first time on 1 April 1922, but did not formally "solo" until a year later on April 9 1923, in a World War I-surplus Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplane that he had bought in Georgia for $500. He soon began barnstorming under the name of the "Daredevil Lindbergh." Lindbergh made his first nighttime flight near Lake Village, Arkansas, in April 1923. During this time he also briefly held a job as an airline mechanic in Billings, Montana, working at the Billings Municipal Airport (later renamed Billings Logan International Airport).

In March 1924, Lindbergh enlisted in the Army Air Service and began military flight training at Brooks and Kelly Fields near San Antonio, Texas, in a class with 103 other cadets. Only 18 of that group remained when he was graduated first overall in his class in March 1925, thereby earning his Army pilot's wings and a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Service Reserve Corps. With the Army not then in need of additional active duty pilots, however, Lindbergh returned to civilian aviation although he also joined the 110th Observation Squadron, 35th Division, Missouri National Guard as a reserve officer in November 1925, and was promoted to 1st Lieutenant.

Air Mail pioneer and advocate

Large commercial corner cover flown by Charles Lindbergh from Chicago to St. Louis on the opening day of CAM-2, April 15 1926. (Cooper Collection)

In October 1925, Lindbergh was hired by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation (RAC) to first lay out, and then serve as chief pilot for the newly designated 278-mile Contract Air Mail Route (CAM-2) to operate between St. Louis and Chicago (Maywood Field) with two intermediate stops in Springfield and Peoria, Illinois. Operating from Robertson's home base at the Lambert-St. Louis Flying Field in Anglum, Missouri, Lindbergh and three other RAC pilots, Philip R. Love, Thomas P. Nelson and Harlan A. "Bud" Gurney, flew the mail over CAM-2 in a fleet of four modified war surplus de Havilland DH-4 biplanes. Two days before he opened service on the route on April 15 1926, with its first early morning southbound flight from Chicago to St. Louis, Lindbergh officially became authorized to undertake, and be entrusted with, the "care, custody, and conveyance" of U.S. Mails by formally subscribing and swearing to the Post Office Department's 1874 Oath of Mail Messengers. This is an obligation which he would soon prove that he took quite seriously.

Lindbergh's copy of the Weekly Postage Report for CAM-2 for the week ending February 12 1927

Twice during the 10 months that he flew CAM-2, Lindbergh temporarily lost custody and control of the mail when he was forced to bail out of his mail plane while approaching Chicago at night (first near Ottawa, IL, on September 16 1926, and then near Covell, IL, on November 3 1926) because of bad weather, equipment problems, and/or fuel exhaustion. On both occasions his first concern after he alighting in remote farm fields was to immediately arrange to locate the wreckage of his crashed mail plane, and then to make sure that the bags of mail were promptly secured, safely salvaged, and trucked on to their destination with as little further delay as possible. Lindbergh remained in service as chief pilot of CAM-2 until mid-February 1927, when he left for San Diego, CA, to oversee the design and construction of the Spirit of St. Louis.

Cover flown by Charles Lindbergh in the Spirit of St. Louis from Santo Domingo to Port-au-Prince (February 6 1928) and Havana (February 8 1928) (Cooper Collection)

Although Lindbergh never returned to service as a regular Air Mail pilot, for many years after making his historic non-stop flight to Paris he used the immense fame that his exploits had brought him to help promote the use of the Air Mail service both by giving many speeches on its behalf and by carrying souvenir mail on both special promotional domestic flights as well as on a number of flights over routes in Latin America and the Caribbean which he had laid out as a consultant to Pan American Airways to be flown under contract to the Post Office Department as Foreign Air Mail (FAM) routes. In February, 1928, at the request of Capt. Basil L. Rowe, the owner and Chief Pilot of West Indian Aerial Express and a fellow Air Mail pioneer and advocate, Lindbergh carried a small amount of special souvenir mail between Santo Domingo, R.D,, Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Havana, Cuba.

Autographed USPOD cover flown Northbound by Charles Lindbergh over CAM-2 on February 21 1928, and Southbound on February 21. (Cooper Collection)

Those cities were the last three stops that he made in the Spirit of St. Louis during his 7,800-mile, 13-nation "Good Will Tour" of Latin America between December 13 1927, and February 8 1928. These final two legs of that long tour were also the only flights on which officially sanctioned, postally franked mail was ever carried in this famous aircraft. Exactly two weeks later, Lindbergh also "returned" to flying CAM-2 for two days so that he could pilot a series of special flights (Northbound on February 20; Southbound on February 21) on which many tens of thousands of self-addressed souvenir covers sent in from all over the nation and the world were flown and then returned to their senders as a further means to promote awareness and the use of the Air Mail service.

First non-stop flight from New York to Paris

Charles Lindbergh (left) accepted his prize from Raymond Orteig (right) in New York on June 14 1927

The Orteig Prize, a US$25,000 prize offered in 1919 by New York hotelier Raymond Orteig, a Frenchman, for the first non-stop flight from New York City to Paris spurred a great amount of interest worldwide. Either an eastbound flight from New York or a westbound flight from Paris would qualify. The first challengers were French war heroes Captain Charles Nungesser and his navigator François Coli. They departed on May 8 1927 on a westbound flight in the Levasseur PL 8, L'Oiseau Blanc. Their last contact was when they crossed the coast of Ireland. Other teams including famed World War I fighter ace René Fonck, Clarence Chamberlin, who made the second non-stop flight across the Atlantic two weeks after Lindbergh, landing in Eisleben, Germany near Berlin, and Admiral Richard E. Byrd, were also in the race to claim the prize. Noel Davis and Stanton H. Wooster were killed in a crash, and Charles N. Clavier and Jacob Islaroff were burned to death at Roosevelt Airfield when Fonck’s overloaded Sikorsky aircraft nosed over on takeoff.

Part of the funding for the Spirit of St. Louis came from Lindbergh's own earnings as an Air Mail pilot over the year before his non-stop flight to Paris. (Cooper Collection)

Lindbergh achieved virtually instantaneous international fame by becoming the first pilot to fly non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris, departing on his solo flight from Roosevelt Airfield, Garden City, New York on May 20 1927, and landing 33.5 hours later at Paris - Le Bourget Airport on the evening of May 21. His aircraft, dubbed the Spirit of St. Louis, was a fabric covered, single-engine "Ryan NYP" monoplane (CAB registration: N-X-211) designed by Donald Hall and custom built by Ryan Aeronautical Company of San Diego, California. Although the primary source of funding for the aircraft and other expenses related to the overall New York to Paris effort came from a $15,000 State National Bank of St. Louis loan made on February 18 1927, to St. Louis businessmen Harry H. Knight and Harold M. Bixby, the project's principal trustees, and another $1,000 donated by Frank Robertson of RAC on the same day, Lindbergh himself also personally contributed $2,000 of his own money from both his savings and his earnings from the 10 months that he flew the Air Mail for RAC.

Ten Cent "Lindbergh Air Mail" U.S. Postage Stamp (Scott C-10) issued June 11 1927

Gaston Doumergue, the President of France, bestowed the French Légion d'honneur on the young Capt. Lindbergh, and on his arrival back in the United States aboard the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Memphis (CL-13) on June 11 1927, a fleet of warships and aircraft escorted him up the Potomac River to Washington, D.C. where President Calvin Coolidge awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross. On that same day the U.S. Post Office Department issued an airmail stamp depicting the Spirit of St. Louis and a map of the flight. A ticker-tape parade was held for him down 5th Avenue in New York City on June 13 1927. The following night the City of New York further honored Capt. Lindbergh with a grand banquet at the Hotel Commodore attended by some 3,600 people.

Program cover for "WE" Banquet for Charles Lindbergh given by the Mayor's Committee on Receptions of the City of New York on June 14 1927 (Cooper Collection)

His public stature following this flight was such that he became an important voice on behalf of aviation activities, including the central committee of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in the United States. The massive publicity surrounding him and his flight boosted the aircraft industry and made a skeptical public take air travel seriously. Lindbergh is recognized in aviation for demonstrating and charting polar air-routes, high altitude flying techniques, and increasing aircraft flying range by decreasing fuel consumption. These innovations are the basis of modern intercontinental air travel.

Elinor Smith Sullivan, winner of the 1930 Best Woman Aviator of the Year Award, described the impact Lindbergh had on aviation. She remembers that before his flight, "people seemed to think we [aviators] were from outer space or something. But after Charles Lindbergh's flight, we could do no wrong. It's hard to describe the impact Lindbergh had on people. Even the first walk on the moon doesn't come close. The twenties was such an innocent time, and people were still so religious – I think they felt like this man was sent by God to do this. And it changed aviation forever because all of a sudden the Wall Streeters were banging on doors looking for airplanes to invest in. We'd been standing on our heads trying to get them to notice us but after Lindbergh, suddenly everyone wanted to fly, and there weren't enough planes to carry them."

Flight from Paris to Belgium: Lindbergh's flight to Belgium to be honored after his trans-Atlantic flight.

Although Lindbergh was the first to fly solo from New York to Paris non-stop, he was not the first aviator to complete a transatlantic heavier-than-air aircraft flight. That had been done first in stages by the crew of the NC-4, in May 1919, although their flying boat broke down and had to be repaired before continuing. The NC-4 flights took 19 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Watch designed by Lindbergh after his transatlantic flight.

The first truly non-stop transatlantic flight (over a route a far shorter route than Lindbergh's) was achieved nearly eight years before in 1919 by two British flyers, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, in a modified Vickers Vimy IV bomber in which they departed from Lester's Field near St. John's, Newfoundland, on June 14 and arrived at Clifden, Ireland, the following day. A total of 81 people had flown across the Atlantic prior to Lindbergh. However, his was the first solo, non-stop transatlantic flight. Lindbergh's grandson Erik Lindbergh repeated this trip 75 years later in 2002 in 17 hours 17 minutes.

After his flight, Lindbergh wrote a letter to the director of Longines, describing in detail a watch which would make navigation easier for pilots. The watch was manufactured to his design and is still produced today.

Marriage, children, kidnapping

Main article: Lindbergh kidnapping

Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the daughter of diplomat Dwight Morrow. According to a Biography Channel profile on Lindbergh, she was the only woman that he had ever asked out on a date. The couple married on May 27 1929; he taught her how to fly and did much of his exploring and charting of air routes with her. They had six children: Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. (1930–1932); Jon Morrow Lindbergh (b. August 16 1932); Land Morrow Lindbergh (b. 1937), who studied anthropology at Stanford University and married Susan Miller in San Diego; Anne Lindbergh (1940–1993); Scott Lindbergh (b. 1942); and Reeve Lindbergh (b. 1945), a writer.

Charles Lindbergh testifies at the murder trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, January 1935

Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., 20 months old, was abducted from the Lindbergh home on March 1 1932. A nationwide, 10-week search ensued, and ransom negotiations were conducted with the kidnappers. An infant corpse was found on May 12 in Hopewell, New Jersey, just a few miles from the Lindberghs' home, and identified by Lindbergh as his son. More than three years later, a media circus ensued when the man accused of the murder, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, went on trial in Flemington, New Jersey, on January 2 1935. The Lindberghs eventually grew tired of the never ending spotlight on both themselves and their second son, Jon, and decided to move to Britain, sailing furtively from New York for Europe on the SS American Importer in the early morning hours of 22 December 1935. Convicted on February 13 1935, of the kidnapping and murder after a sensational six week trial, Hauptmann nervertheless always continued to maintain his innocence. Despite a last minute attempt by New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman (who expressed doubts about his guilt) to get his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, Hauptmann was electrocuted at Trenton State Prison on April 3 1936.

Pre-war activities

In Europe, during the pre-war period, Lindbergh traveled to Germany several times at the behest of the U.S. military, where he reported on German aviation and the German Air Force (Luftwaffe). Lindbergh was intrigued and stated that Germany had taken a leading role in many aviation developments, including metal construction, low-wing designs, dirigibles and diesel engines. Lindbergh also undertook a survey of aviation in the Soviet Union in 1938 and reported to the United States military upon his return from each of these trips.

The Lindberghs lived in England and France during the late 1930s in order to find tranquility and avoid the celebrity that followed them everywhere in the United States after the kidnapping trial.

While living in France, Lindbergh worked with Nobel Prize-winning French surgeon Dr. Alexis Carrel, with whom he had collaborated on earlier projects when the latter lived in the United States. In 1930, Lindbergh's sister-in-law developed a fatal heart condition. Lindbergh began to wonder why no one could repair hearts with surgery. He discovered it was because organs could not be kept alive outside the body, and he set about working on a solution to the problem with Carrel. Lindbergh's invention, a glass perfusion pump, was credited with making future heart surgeries possible. The device in this early stage was far from perfected, however. Although perfused organs were said to have survived surprisingly well, all showed progressive degenerative changes within a few days. Carrel also introduced Lindbergh to eugenics and scientific racism; these ideas significantly influenced Lindbergh's later sympathies with fascist politics and American isolationism, which eventually ruined his public reputation in America.

In 1929, Lindbergh became interested in the work of U.S. rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. The following year, Lindbergh helped Goddard secure his first endowment from Daniel Guggenheim, which allowed Goddard to expand his independent research and development. Lindbergh remained a key supporter and advocate of Goddard's work throughout his life.

Lindbergh's German Eagle

In 1938, Lindbergh and Carrel collaborated on a book, The Culture of Organs, which summarized their work on perfusion of organs outside the body. Lindbergh and Carrel discussed an artificial heart but it was decades before one was actually built.

In 1938, the American ambassador to Germany, Hugh Wilson, invited Lindbergh to a dinner with Hermann Göring at the American embassy in Berlin. The dinner included diplomats and three of the greatest minds of German aviation, Ernst Heinkel, Adolf Baeumaker and Dr. Willy Messerschmitt. Göring presented Lindbergh with the Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle (the Großkreuz des Verdienstordens vom Deutschen Adler) for his services to aviation and particularly for his 1927 flight (Henry Ford received the same award earlier in July). Lindbergh's acceptance of the honor later caused an outcry in the United States. Lindbergh declined to return the medal to the Germans because he claimed that to do so would be "an unnecessary insult" to the German Nazi government. He returned to the United States soon after World War II broke out in Europe.

Munich Crisis

Lindbergh went to Germany at the urgent request of the U.S. military attaché in Berlin, who was charged with learning everything possible about Germany's new warplanes. Thus Lindbergh traveled repeatedly to Germany, touring German aviation facilities, where the Luftwaffe chief tried to convince Lindbergh that the Luftwaffe was far more powerful than it actually was. Lindbergh used his prestige to gain far more knowledge of German warplanes than any other American. As historian Wayne Cole explains:

"Of particular importance were the Junkers Ju 88 and, again, the Messerschmitt Bf 109. With the approval of Goering and Ernst Udet, Lindbergh was the first American permitted to examine the Luftwaffe's newest and best bomber, the Ju 88. And he got the unprecedented opportunity to pilot its finest fighter, the Bf 109. He was highly impressed by both aircraft and knew "of no other pursuit plane which combines simplicity of construction with such excellent performance characteristics" as the Bf 109. In his visits to Germany from 1936 through 1938, Colonel Lindbergh closely inspected all the types of military aircraft that Germany was to use in 1939 and 1940. The Bf 109 and Ju 88 were front line German combat aircraft throughout World War II. And Lindbergh's findings about those various combat aircraft found their way into American air intelligence reports to Washington long before the European war began."

At the urging of U.S. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, Lindbergh wrote a secret memo for the British arguing that if England and France attempted to stop German dictator Adolf Hitler's aggression, it would be military suicide. Some military historians argue that Lindbergh was basically accurate and that his warnings helped save Britain from likely defeat in 1938. Others say that his actions were beneficial to the Third Reich's war effort. There is a case for both of these arguments, since Lindbergh favored a war between Germany and Russia, but deplored the rivalry between Germany and Britain. In Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle against American Intervention in World War II, Cole explains how Lindbergh was dismayed that pacifism in France had already left that country without a sufficient military and possibly already doomed by 1938, and that Britain had an outdated military still focused on naval power instead of an updated air arsenal to deter the Luftwaffe and force Hitler to turn his ambitions eastward toward a war against "Asiatic Communism". There is some controversy as to how accurate his alarmism concerning the Luftwaffe was, but Cole reports that the consensus among British and American officials was that it was slightly exaggerated but nevertheless badly needed. Lindbergh saw no contradiction between his advocacy of stronger American and British armed forces and diplomatic appeasement of Nazi Germany. "Our civilization depends on peace among Western nations," he wrote in a controversial 1939 Reader's Digest article, "and therefore on united strength, for Peace is a virgin who dare not show her face without Strength, her father, for protection."

Political allegations against Lindbergh

Lindbergh was suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer because of his numerous scientific expeditions to Nazi Germany, combined with a belief in eugenics. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt disliked Lindbergh's increasingly outspoken views against intervention and specifically Roosevelt's policies such as the Lend-Lease Act. Lindbergh's attempt to have his Army Air Corp commission reinstated in 1941 was blocked by the Roosevelt administration in December of that year. His subsequent combat missions as a civilian technical representative restored his reputation after the public found out about them, but only to an extent. However, his Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, A. Scott Berg, contends that Lindbergh was not so much a supporter of the Nazi regime as someone so stubborn in his convictions and relatively inexperienced in political maneuvering that he easily allowed rivals to portray him as one. Lindbergh's receipt of the German medal was approved without objection by the American embassy; the war had not yet begun in Europe. Indeed, the award did not cause controversy until the war began and Lindbergh returned to the United States in 1939 to spread his message of non-intervention.

A. Scott Berg similarly contends that Lindbergh's views were commonplace in the United States in the pre-World War II era. Lindbergh's support for the America First Committee was representative of the sentiments of a number of American people. His anti-Communism resonated deeply with many Americans. Eugenics and Nordicism enjoyed much social acceptance, and other notable enthusiasts of such ideas included Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and George S. Patton.

Lindbergh's political views were complex, and revealed both consistencies and inconsistencies with those of the Nazis. For instance, Lindbergh avowed a belief in American democracy. However, he clearly stated elsewhere that he believed the survival of the white race was more important than the survival of democracy in Europe: "Our bond with Europe is one of race and not of political ideology," he declared. He had, however, a relatively positive attitude toward blacks (something that was scheduled to be fully revealed in an undelivered speech interrupted by the events that followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor). Critics have noticed an apparent influence of German philosopher Oswald Spengler's ideas on Lindbergh's thinking. Controversial and widely read throughout Western World during the interwar era, Spengler was conservative and authoritarian, but eventually fell out of favor with the Nazis because he did not wholly subscribe to their theories of racial purity.

Lindbergh's detractors created propaganda pamphlets attempting to tie him to alleged Nazi intrigue, pointing out that his efforts were praised in Nazi Germany and including quotations such as "Racial strength is vital; politics, a luxury." They included pictures of him using the stiff-armed Bellamy salute (a hand gesture described by Francis Bellamy to accompany his Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States). Berg explains that interventionist propagandists photographed Lindbergh and other America Firsters using this salute from an angle that did not show the American flag, so that it would be indistinguishable to observers from the Hitler salute.

Although Lindbergh was labeled "anti-Semitic" in some quarters for his admonishment of Jewish leaders who favored American involvement in foreign wars, he often argued that he actually respected and sympathized with the Jewish people. In a speech entitled “Who are the War Agitators?” made on September 11 1941, at an America First Committee’s rally in Des Moines, Iowa, Lindbergh declared, "I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire." These words were immediately followed, however, by the statement that:

But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.

Lindbergh was ultimately critical of Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews. He said in his Des Moines speech that "No person with a sense of dignity of mankind can condone" such treatment. He was also heavily criticized, however, for what many considered to be an anti-semitic contention that he made in the same speech with regards to America's Jews that "Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government."

Lindbergh developed a long-term friendship with the automobile pioneer Henry Ford, who was well-known for his anti-Semitic diatribes and publications. In a famous comment about Lindbergh to Detroit's former FBI bureau chief in July 1940, Ford said: "When Charles comes out here, we only talk about the Jews."

Lindbergh argued that America did not have any business attacking Germany and believed in upholding the Monroe Doctrine, which his interventionist rivals felt was outdated. He feared that destroying a powerful European nation would lead to the downfall of Western Civilization and a rise in Communist supremacy over Europe.

Much of his position was because he considered Russia to be a "semi-Asiatic" rather than European country compared to Germany, and because he found Communism to be an ideology that would destroy the West's "racial strength" and eventually replace everyone of European descent with "a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown". The latter belief was more important and consistent than the former, since he saw Russia as a natural barrier to the rising East Asian powers. He believed that race was directly correlated to national success and non-whites were generally mentally inferior. Lindbergh admired specific elements from European nations, such as "the German genius for science and organization, the English genius for government and commerce, the French genius for living and the understanding of life". He believed that "in America they can be blended to form the greatest genius of all". His interrupted plan to voice his opposition to the Jim Crow laws was possibly inspired by his belief in black "sensate superiority" as well as an opportunity to expose what he saw as FDR's hypocrisy. As an advocate of political realism and a cultural pessimist, he may have felt that state-enforced racial segregation had become untenable and counterproductive. His message was popular throughout many Northern communities and especially well-received in the Midwest, while the American South was Anglophilic and supported a pro-British foreign policy. Lindbergh considered Hitler a fanatic even before the details of the Holocaust reached him, but he openly stated that, if he had to choose, he would rather see his country allied with Nazi Germany than Soviet Russia. (He preferred "Nordic" cultures, but he also believed that Russia would one day be a valuable ally against potential aggression from East Asia after Soviet Communism was defeated.

The American Axis, written by Holocaust researcher and investigative journalist Max Wallace, takes a harsh view of Lindbergh's pre-war actions, agreeing with Franklin Roosevelt's assessment that Lindbergh was "pro-Nazi". However, Wallace finds that the Roosevelt Administration's accusations of dual loyalty or treason are unsubstantiated. Wallace considers Lindbergh a well-intentioned but bigoted and misguided sympathizer of the Nazis whose career as the leader of the isolationist movement had a destructive impact on Jewish people. In his 1999 biography of Lindbergh, A. Scott Berg criticizes Lindbergh's anti-Semitic beliefs but distinguishes between what Berg considers Lindbergh's paranoia about the intentions of most American Jews and the virulent anti-Semitism of the Nazis. Berg finds that Lindbergh believed in a voluntary rather than compulsory eugenics program but takes his subject to task for basing his view of the war on his "xenophobic thinking" and his assumption that Hitler was not as dangerous as a "Genghis Khan or Xerxes marching against our Western nations" because the Nazi leader was a European nationalist rather than a Communist or "some Asiatic intruder."

The same year that Berg's Pulitzer Prize winning bestseller Lindbergh was published, a book appeared by Pat Buchanan entitled A Republic, Not An Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny. The book portrays Lindbergh and other pre-war isolationists as American patriots, who were smeared by interventionists during the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. Buchanan suggests that the backlash against Lindbergh highlights "the explosiveness of mixing ethnic politics with foreign policy". The views expressed in the book caused considerable controversy that eventually led to Buchanan's departure from the Republican Party.

Lindbergh had always preached military strength and alertness. He believed that a strong defensive war machine, as well as his views about race, would make America an impenetrable fortress and defend the Western Hemisphere from an attack by foreign powers, and that this was the U.S. military's sole purpose.

Many acknowledge that Lindbergh helped keep American public opinion isolationist until 1941 by advancing the movement to keep America out of the war for as long as possible. At the same time, some praise Lindbergh for his prediction that an Iron Curtain would descend upon Europe; many of the predictions which Lindbergh made about the war came before Hitler violated his non-aggression pact with Stalin and launched Operation Barbarossa. Berg reveals that, while the attack on Pearl Harbor came as a shock to Lindbergh, he did predict that America's "wavering policy in the Philippines" would invite a bloody war there, and, in one speech, he warned that "we should either fortify these islands adequately, or get out of them entirely". Cole, Wallace, and Buchanan all believe that Lindbergh was highly influential in ensuring that Hitler's war machine would advance toward the Eastern Front and inflict the most devastation there.

However, it should be noted that, as the most prominent spokesman of the America First Committee, he fought the Lend-Lease Act and the Atlantic Charter. Had the Lead-Lease Act not been passed, as well as the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, Britain might not have survived, possibly leading to Axis victory.

Outbreak of war

As World War II began in Europe, Lindbergh became a prominent speaker in favor of non-intervention, going so far as to recommend that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Germany during his January 23 1941, testimony before Congress. He joined the antiwar America First Committee and soon became its most prominent public spokesman, speaking to overflow crowds in Madison Square Garden in New York City and Soldier Field in Chicago.

Charles Lindbergh speaking at an AFC rally

In a speech at an America First rally on September 11 1941, in Des Moines entitled "Who Are the War Agitators?" Lindbergh claimed that the three groups who had been "pressing this country toward war [were] the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration" and complained about the Jewish People's "large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government." Although he made clear his opposition to German anti-Semitism, stating that "No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany," other comments seemed to suggest that he believed that Jews should expect trouble for supporting the war: "Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation".

Lindbergh revealed a nativist xenophobia in an expurgated portion of his published diaries: “We must limit to a reasonable amount the Jewish influence… Whenever the Jewish percentage of total population becomes too high, a reaction seems to invariably occur. It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country.” His reaction to Kristallnacht was entrusted to his diary: "I do not understand these riots on the part of the Germans," he wrote. "It seems so contrary to their sense of order and intelligence. They have undoubtedly had a difficult 'Jewish problem,' but why is it necessary to handle it so unreasonably?"

There was widespread negative reaction to the speech. Lindbergh was forced to defend and clarify his comments by noting again that he was not anti-Semitic, but he did not back away from his statement. Lindbergh resigned his commission in the U.S. Army Air Corps when President Roosevelt openly questioned his loyalty (which did severe damage to his reputation at the time). After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Lindbergh attempted to return to the Army Air Corps, but was denied when several of Roosevelt's cabinet secretaries registered objections.

Lindbergh said: "I am not attacking the Jewish people. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war."

World War II

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh offered his services once again to his country, proposing to reactivate his colonel's commission within the new United States Army Air Forces. He was rejected by FDR's administration. Charles Lindbergh then sought an active role in aviation to serve the war effort, if only as a civilian. He went on to assist with the war effort by serving as a consultant to aviation companies, beginning with Ford in 1942, working at the Willow Run B-24 production line. Later in 1943, he joined United Aircraft as an engineering consultant, devoting most of his time to its Chance-Vought Division. As a technical advisor with Ford, he was deeply involved in trouble-shooting early problems encountered in B-24 production. As B-24 production smoothed out, he devoted more time to Chance-Vought. The following year, he persuaded United Aircraft to designate him a technical representative in the Pacific War to study aircraft performances under combat conditions. He showed Marine F4U pilots how to take off with twice the bomb load that the aircraft was rated for and on May 21 1944 he flew his first combat mission: a strafing run with VMF-222 near the Japanese garrison of Rabaul.

In his six months in the Pacific in 1944, Lindbergh took part in fighter bomber raids on Japanese positions, flying about 50 combat missions (again as a civilian). His innovations in the use of P-38s impressed a supportive Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Lindbergh's contributions included engine-leaning techniques that he introduced to P-38 Lightning pilots, greatly improving fuel usage at cruise speeds, enabling the long-range fighter aircraft to fly even longer range missions. On July 28 1944, during a P-38 bomber escort mission with the 475th Fighter Group, Fifth Air Force, in the Ceram area, Lindbergh shot down a Sonia observation plane piloted by Captain Saburo Shimada, Commanding Officer of the 73rd Independent Chutai. The U.S. Marine and Army Air Force pilots who served with "Slim" admired and respected him, praising his courage and defending his patriotism.

Later life

The Spirit of St. Louis on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

After World War II he lived quietly in Connecticut as a consultant both to the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force and to Pan American World Airways. With most of Eastern Europe having fallen under Communist control, Lindbergh believed most of his pre-war assessments had been correct all along. But Berg reports that after witnessing the defeat of Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand shortly after his service in the Pacific, "he knew the American public no longer gave a hoot about his opinions." His 1953 book The Spirit of St. Louis, recounting his non-stop transatlantic flight, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. Dwight D. Eisenhower restored Lindbergh's assignment with the Army Air Corps and made him a Brigadier General in 1954. In that year, he served on the Congressional advisory panel set up to establish the site of the United States Air Force Academy. In December 1968, he visited the crew of Apollo 8 on the eve of the first manned spaceflight to leave earth orbit.

Children from other relationships

From 1957 until his death in 1974, Lindbergh had an affair with German hat maker Brigitte Hesshaimer who lived in a small Bavarian town called Geretsried (35 km south of Munich). On November 23 2003, DNA tests proved that he fathered her three children: Dyrk (1958), Astrid (1960) and David (1967). The two managed to keep the affair secret; even the children did not know the true identity of their father, whom they saw when he came to visit once or twice per year using the alias, "Careu Kent". Astrid later read a magazine article about Lindbergh and found snapshots and more than a hundred letters written from him to her mother. She disclosed the affair after both Brigitte and Anne Morrow Lindbergh had died. At the same time as Lindbergh was involved with Brigitte Hesshaimer, he also had relationship with her sister, Marietta, who bore him two more sons – Vago and Christoph. Lindbergh had a house of his own design built for Marietta in a vineyard in Grimisuat in the Swiss canton Valais.

A 2005 book by German author Rudolf Schroeck, Das Doppelleben des Charles A. Lindbergh (The Double Life of Charles A. Lindbergh), claims seven secret children existed in Germany. It says Lindbergh "came and went as he pleased" during the last 17 years of his life, spending between three to five days with his Munich family about four to five times each year. "Ten days before he died in August 1974, Lindbergh wrote three letters from his hospital bed to his three mistresses and requested 'utmost secrecy'," Schroeck writes, whose book includes a copy of that letter to Brigitte Hesshaimer.

In April 2008, Reeve Lindbergh, his youngest daughter, will publish Forward From Here, a book of essays that includes her discovery in 2003, of the truth about her father's three secret European families and her journeys to meet them and understand an expanded meaning of family.

Environmental causes

From the 1960s on, Lindbergh became an advocate for the conservation of the natural world, campaigning to protect endangered species like humpback and blue whales, was instrumental in establishing protections for the controversial Filipino group, the Tasaday, and African tribes, and supporting the establishment of a national park. While studying the native flora and fauna of the Philippines, he became involved in an effort to protect the Philippine eagle. In his final years, Lindbergh became troubled that the world was out of balance with its natural environment; he stressed the need to regain that balance, and spoke against the introduction of supersonic airliners.

Lindbergh's speeches and writings later in life emphasized his love of both technology and nature, and a lifelong belief that "all the achievements of mankind have value only to the extent that they preserve and improve the quality of life." In a 1967 Life magazine article, he said, "The human future depends on our ability to combine the knowledge of science with the wisdom of wildness."

In honor of Charles and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh's vision of achieving balance between the technological advancements they helped pioneer, and the preservation of the human and natural environments, the Lindbergh Award was established in 1978. Each year since 1978, the Lindbergh Foundation has given the award to recipients whose work has made a significant contribution toward the concept of "balance."

Lindbergh's final book, Autobiography of Values, based on an unfinished manuscript was published posthumously. While on his death bed, he had contacted his friend, William Jovanovich, head of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, to edit the lengthy memoirs.

Death

Charles Lindbergh's grave

Lindbergh spent his final years on the Hawaiian island of Maui, where he died of lymphoma on August 26 1974. He was buried on the grounds of the Palapala Ho'omau Church in Kipahulu, Maui. His epitaph on a simple stone which quotes Psalms 139:9, reads: Charles A. Lindbergh Born: Michigan, 1902. Died: Maui, 1974. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. — CAL

Because of earthquake damage to Hawaii State Highway 31, Lindbergh's final resting place is presently accessible by land only via State Highway 360, or the so-called Road to Hana.

Honors and tributes

The Lindbergh Terminal at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport was named after him, and a replica of The Spirit of St. Louis hangs there. Another replica of his aircraft hangs in the great hall at the recently rebuilt Jefferson Memorial at Forest Park in St. Louis. The definitive oil painting of Charles Lindbergh by St. Louisan Richard Krause entitled "The Spirit Soars" ([1]) has been displayed there. He lent his name to San Diego's Lindbergh Field, which is also known as San Diego International Airport. The airport in Winslow, Arizona has been renamed Winslow-Lindbergh Regional. Lindbergh himself designed the airport in 1929 when it was built as a refueling point for the first coast-to-coast air service. The airport in Little Falls, Minnesota, where he grew up, has been named Little Falls/Morrison County-Lindbergh Field.

The original "The Spirit of St. Louis" currently resides in the National Air and Space Museum as part of the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1952, Grandview High School in St. Louis County was renamed Lindbergh High School. The school newspaper is the Pilot, the yearbook is the Spirit, and the students are known as the Flyers. The school district was also later named after Lindbergh. The stretch of US 67 that runs through most of the St. Louis metro area is called "Lindbergh Blvd." Lindbergh has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

In Lindbergh's hometown of Little Falls, Minnesota, one of the district's elementary schools is named Charles Lindbergh Elementary. The district's sports teams are named the "Flyers" and "Lindbergh Drive" is a major road on the west side of town, leading to "Lindbergh State Park" (named after Lindbergh's father). The original Lindbergh residence is maintained as a museum, the "Charles A. Lindbergh Historic Site."

Lindbergh is a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America.

Awards and decorations

Lindbergh received many awards, medals and decorations, most of which were later donated to the Missouri Historical Society and are on display at the Jefferson Memorial, now part of the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri:

The Congressional Gold Medal authorized by the Congress on May 4 1928, and presented on August 15 1930, to Col. C.A. Lindbergh by President Calvin Coolidge at The White House, Washington, DC.

• Medal of Honor (USA, 1927)
• Légion d'honneur (France, 1927)
• Royal Air Force Cross (UK)
• Hubbard Medal (USA, 1927)
• Distinguished Flying Cross (USA, 1927)
• Congressional Gold Medal (USA, 1928)
• Service Cross of the German Eagle (Verdienstorden vom Deutschen Adler') (Germany Deutsches Reich, 1938)
• Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy (USA, 1949)
• Daniel Guggenheim Medal (USA, 1953)
• Pulitzer Prize (USA, 1954)
• Silver Buffalo Award (USA)
• Official Royal Air Force Museum Medal (UK)
• Honorary Scout (USA, 1927)

Medal of Honor

Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve. Place and date: From New York City to Paris, France, May 20–21 1927. Entered service at: Little Falls, Minn. Born: February 4 1902, Detroit, Mich. G.O. No.: 5, W.D., 1928; act of Congress December 14 1927.

Citation: For displaying heroic courage and skill as a navigator, at the risk of his life, by his nonstop flight in his airplane, the "Spirit of St. Louis," from New York City to Paris, France, 20-21 May 1927, by which Capt. Lindbergh not only achieved the greatest individual triumph of any American citizen but demonstrated that travel across the ocean by aircraft was possible.

Legacy

The controversy surrounding his involvement in politics (and to a lesser extent, his personal life) sometimes overshadows the fact that he was an important pioneer in aviation from the 1920s to the 1950s. His 1927 flight made him the first international celebrity in the age of mass media. One U.S. Air Force general remembers Lindbergh's critical view of his own legacy. In the late 1940s, Lindbergh visited U.S. Air Force bases to evaluate American air power (of which he was a staunch supporter) in relation to the emerging Cold War. During this trip, he remarked "I think my flight to Paris came too soon for the civilizations of the world. They were suddenly thrown together by air travel and they weren't quite ready for it."

Popular culture

A wall-mounted quote by Charles Augustus Lindbergh in The American Adventure in the World Showcase pavilion of Walt Disney World's Epcot.

Lindbergh's life has spurred the imaginations of many writers and others; the following list provides a summary of notable popular cultural references:

• Charles Lindbergh was selected as Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1927, the first holder of that title.
• Shortly after Lindbergh made his famous flight, the Stratemeyer Syndicate began publishing the Ted Scott Flying Stories (1927–1943) by Franklin W. Dixon wherein the hero was closely modeled after Lindbergh.
• Charles A. Lindbergh (1927) was a UK documentary by De Forest Phonofilm based on Lindbergh's milestone flight.
• A song called "Lindbergh (The Eagle Of The U.S.A.)" was released soon after the 1927 flight. A multitude of songs with "Lucky Lindy" in the title were released in the aftermath of the Atlantic crossing. Tony Randall, not particularly known for singing, but a fan of old songs, revived the song, "Lucky Lindy" in the 1960s in a collection of jazz-age and depression era songs that he recorded.
• The dance craze, the "Lindy Hop" became popular after his flight, and was named after him.
• 40,000 Miles with Lindbergh (1928) was a documentary featuring Charles A. Lindbergh.
• The Agatha Christie book (1934) and movie Murder on the Orient Express (1974) begin with a fictionalized depiction of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
• Verdensberømtheder i København (1939) was an English/Danish co-production starring Robert Taylor, Myrna Loy and Edward G. Robinson, featured Charles A. Lindbergh as himself.
• Woody Guthrie wrote a song called "Lindbergh" on "The Asch Recordings Vol. 1" recorded in the 1940s. The song was anti-Lindbergh, and included the line "they say America First but they mean America Next."
• The 1942 film, Keeper of the Flame, starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, features Hepburn as the wife of a Lindbergh-like national hero who is secretly a fascist intending to use his influence, especially over America's youth, to turn the country into a fascist state and eliminate inferior races.
• James Stewart played Lindbergh in the biographical The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), directed by Billy Wilder.
• In Eric Norden's alternate history novel The Ultimate Solution (1973), Norden speculates that Lindbergh would have been president of a Nazi-occupied American puppet state.
• The American Experience - Lindbergh: The Shocking, Turbulent Life of America's Lone Eagle (1988) was a PBS documentary directed by Stephen Ives.
• In the early 2000s, a full-length musical called "Baby Case," about the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping and subsequent trial and media circus, was performed at the Arden Theater in Philadelphia to good reviews.
• The Philip Roth novel The Plot Against America (2004) is a speculative fiction novel which explores an alternate history where Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defeated in the 1940 presidential election by Charles Lindbergh, who allies the United States with Nazi Germany.

See also

• NC-4 - The first flight across the Atlantic in a heavier-than-air aircraft.
• Alcock and Brown - The first non-stop flight across the Atlantic in a heavier-than-air aircraft.
• Lindbergh (The Eagle Of The U.S.A.) a popular song by Al Sherman and Howard Johnson.
• Lindy Hop - The original swing dance named after "Lindy hopped the Atlantic."
• List of people on stamps of Ireland
• The Lindbergh kidnapping.
• Dwight Morrow
• America First Committee
• List of Medal of Honor recipients during Peacetime
• Little Falls, Minnesota-Boyhood home

References

Bibliography

• Berg, A. Scott. Lindbergh. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1998. ISBN 0-399-14449-8.
• Cole, Wayne S. Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. ISBN 0-15-118168-3.
• Collier Peter and Horowitz, David. The Fords, An American Epic. New York: Summit Books, 1987. ISBN 1-89355-432-5.
• Gill, Brendan. Lindbergh Alone. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. ISBN 0-15-152401-7.
• Lindbergh, Charles A. Charles A. Lindbergh: Autobiography of Values. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. ISBN 0-15-110202-3.
• Lindbergh, Charles A. Spirit of St. Louis. New York: Scribners, 1953.
• Lindbergh, Charles A. We. New York: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1927.
• Mersky, Peter B. U.S. Marine Corps Aviation - 1912 to the Present. Annapolis, Maryland: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1983. ISBN 0-933852-39-8.
• Milton, Joyce. Loss of Eden: A Biography of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. ISBN 0-06-016503-0.
• Mosley, Leonard. Lindbergh: A Biography. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1976. ISBN 0-395-09578-3.
• Schroeck, Rudolph. Das Doppelleben des Charles A. Lindbergh (The Double Life of Charles A. Lindbergh). München, Germany/ New York: Heyne Verlag/Random House, 2005. ISBN 3-453-12010-8.
• Smith, Larry and Adams, Eddie. Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003. ISBN 0-39305-134-X.
• Winters, Kathleen. Anne Morrow Lindbergh: First Lady of the Air. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. ISBN 1-403-96932-9.

External links

• Listen to the story of Charles Lindbergh online - The American Storyteller Radio Journal
• Lindbergh had 7 Secret Children in Germany
• Lindbergh's first solo flight
• Yesterday's News: 1927 newspaper article on world reaction to flight
• 1927 Video of Charles Lindbergh's Transatlantic Flight
• Lindbergh foundation
• CharlesLindbergh.com Pat Ranfranz
• [http://www.lindberghkidnappinghoax.com/guthrie.html on Lindbergh Woody Guthrie
• FBI History - Famous cases: The Lindbergh kidnapping
• PBS companion site to The American Experience program on Charles Lindbergh
• The Lone Eagle: 75 Years Later
• Lindbergh's Public Statements Were More Troubling Than His Private Affairs
• The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of the Third Reich
• PBS Article: Charles Lindbergh in the 1940s
• St. Louis Walk of Fame
• Charles A. Lindbergh at IMDb
• Charles Lindbergh: Address On US Neutrality (listen online)
• America First: the Anti-War Movement, Charles Lindbergh and the Second World War, 1940-1941 presentation to The New York Military Affairs Symposium in 2003
• "Der Amerikaner und die Hutmacherin" Gerd Kröncke, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2 August 2003 (German)
• [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE7DE103DF934A35750C0A965958260&pagewanted=print Chesler, Ellen. Better Above than Below. New York Times, 7 March 1993
• Charles Lindbergh: 11 September 1941 speech at Des Moines, Iowa, transcript via PBS
• Lindbergh exhibit at the Missouri Historical Society