Charles Lindbergh: The Lone Eagle Page #4

This early hour of the second morning

the third since I've slept".

Just before dawn, Lindbergh believes

he is visited by ghosts.

"These phantoms speak with

human voices

vapor like shapes, without substance.

The feeling of flesh is gone.

Am I now more man or spirit?"

On the verge of defeat and death,

he finds the fortitude to fly on.

"I'm gaining strength,

I'm crawling upward.

I've finally broken the spell of sleep.

The sight of death has drawn out

the last reserves of strength."

His ghosts, and his fears,

dissolve in the sunrise.

Suddenly he sees something

moving below.

The world has come alive again.

Porpoises.

Then a seagull.

A certain sign that land must be near.

Soon, a tiny dot

that can only be a mirage.

Fishing boats.

Where is he?

Where are they from?

Within half an hour,

another apparition.

He refuses to believe his eyes.

Land.

He looks at the chart,

and at the mass below.

It is Ireland.

He is just three miles off

his plotted course,

and over two hours earlier

than he expected.

When he is spotted over Dingle Bay,

the world rejoices.

For Charles Lindbergh

has not been flying alone.

Only the British Isles remain,

then the Channel.

Then, France.

Lindbergh will be the first man in

history to be in New York one day,

and Paris the next.

"Yesterday I walked on Roosevelt field,

today I'll walk on Le Bourget."

Five hours after reaching Ireland,

at 9:
52 PM

Lindbergh is finally over Paris.

But at this moment of triumph,

strange lights below disorient him.

He circles lower.

He finally locates Le Bourget Airfield,

obscured by bright lights.

Below him, a public hysteria unlike

any in history is about to erupt.

One hundred and fifty thousand people

have come to witness his arrival.

The lights are their automobiles.

At 10:
24 PM, after thirty-three

and a half hours in the air,

the Spirit of St. Louis returns

Charles Lindbergh to the earth.

But his feet do not even touch

French soil.

The mob surges forward, carrying the

exhausted Lindbergh like a rag doll.

They claw at the Spirit of St. Louis,

tearing off pieces of history.

A group of French aviators

finally rescue Lindbergh,

and carry him off to a waiting car.

He is taken to the American embassy,

where he sleeps for nine hours.

And awakens the most famous man

of the century.

Lindbergh's shy grace

wins the heart of Paris.

The crowds hail not only the pilot,

but the dawn of a new age of unity

between Europe and America.

Paris is in a Lindbergh frenzy

for a week.

Then he flies on

to Brussels and London

and is greeted with

explosive hero worship.

But Lindbergh is more than a hero.

He is a 20th Century phenomenon,

the first international superstar.

After two weeks of European adoration,

President Calvin Coolidge orders

Lindbergh home.

A Navy cruiser brings the nation's

most popular hero

and his now, famous plane

back to American soil.

When he arrives in Washington,

An innocent twenty-five-year-old

from the mid-West has become

a living legend.

His next stop is New York,

where four million people

line the streets

for the largest ticker-tape parade

in the city's history.

The public's rapture exhausts

the quiet Lindbergh.

But he seizes the opportunity

to promote aviation's future.

And now, people will listen.

For the summer of 1927,

he crisscrosses America in the Spirit

of St. Louis,

on a crusade to convince the public

to take to the skies.

throng to hear his message,

new converts to the aviation

revolution.

Lindbergh heralds the dawn

of a new era.

By 1928, the air mail service

triples its load

and the passenger business

carries four times

as many people than before

Lindbergh's Paris flight.

His dream is fulfilled.

Those who once soared above Lindbergh

now fade in his shadow.

On June 29, Richard Byrd and his crew

of three finally take off for France

in their 100,000 dollar plane.

Byrd force-lands off

the Normandy coast.

Few take notice of his clumsy flight.

The contest to unite the continents

has already been won,

by the graceful Lone Eagle.

Charles Lindbergh spends the rest of

his life in the air,

promoting the cause of aviation.

At the age of 27, Lindbergh marries.

With his wife, author Anne Morrow,

he maps new flight routes

across the Atlantic and Pacific.

The young couple opens the skies

for air travelers of today.

Lindbergh would also endure

agonizing personal tragedy.

The kidnapping and murder of

the Lindbergh's baby son in 1932.

And outrage following his speeches

opposing war with Nazi Germany.

But Charles Lindbergh's legacy

is not controversy.

It is courage.

The daring of a twenty-five-year old

air mail pilot

who believed he could

change the world, and did.

"When the Spirit of St. Louis

flew to Paris,

aviation was shouldering its way

from the stage of invention

to the stage of usefulness.

I believed that aviation had

a brilliant future.

Technically, we have accomplished

our objectives, passed beyond them.

We actually live today

in our dreams of yesterday

and living those dreams,

we dream again."

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