Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindburgh Biography
Charles Lindbergh was born on February 4, 1902, in Detroit, Michigan, USA, but grew up in the Little Falls area of Minnesota and Washington, D.C. His father was Charles August Lindbergh, a Swedish immigrant who had arrived in the United States with his parents as a small child and went on to become a U.S. Congressman in 1907. His mother was Evangeline Lodge Land, a chemistry teacher who taught at various schools, including Little Falls High School, from which Charles graduated in 1918. As his parents separated when he was only nine years old, Charles attended many schools, switching between living with his father in Washington and his mother in California. He enrolled in college in 1920 but dropped out before heading to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he began flight training in March 1922.
Charles had consistently demonstrated an interest in all things mechanical, especially motorcars and motorcycles, and he soon became interested in flying as well. He flew for the first time on April 9, 1922, after enrolling at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation’s flying school. Soon after, he began taking lessons, but he needed more money to become qualified enough to fly solo. He raised this by barnstorming, wing walking, and parachuting. He first flew solo in May 1923 at a former army training field in Georgia, in an army-surplus Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” that he had bought for $500. After a week of practice, he took off for his first long-distance flight of some 140 miles when he headed west to Montgomery in Alabama.
In 1923, he took on the persona of “Daredevil Lindbergh” and spent most of the year barnstorming. During this time, Lindbergh also made his first nighttime flight while at Lake Village in Arkansas. In addition to barnstorming, he also provided ferry and transportation services, flying a doctor across the Wisconsin River on two occasions, which was impassable at the time due to flooding. He even flew his father, who was running for the Senate, to a campaign stop. 1923 didn’t go without mishap, though. He broke a propeller on a couple of occasions and even once put his plane into a ditch, an incident that left him grounded for a week while he waited for repairs. Shortly after, he sold the “Jenny” to a student and headed off by train, eventually arriving at Brooks Field on 19 March 1924, where he commenced a year of flight training with the army. He graduated first in his class in March 1925, even though during his time there, he had a near-miss incident when he had to bail out of his S.E. 5 due to a mid-air collision during combat manoeuvres. His successful graduation earned him his wings and the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. As the army didn’t need pilots at the time, Lindbergh returned to civilian life but remained a reserve officer and occasionally flew a few hours for the military after joining the 110th Observation Squadron. He was promoted twice more, achieving the rank of captain in July 1926.
After previously becoming a pilot with the Robertson Aircraft Corporation in 1925, where he was tasked with devising the route for an airmail contract between St. Louis and Chicago, he became their chief pilot and opened the service on April 13, 1926. He avoided serious injury after bailing out on two occasions, once due to bad weather and once due to mechanical problems, each time after landing, ensuring that the mail was located and sent on to its destination.
In February 1927, he headed to San Diego, California, where he oversaw the design and construction of the Spirit of St. Louis, the plane that would make him famous. After the Ryan Aircraft Company agreed to build it for $ 10,580, it flew for the first time only two months later. Test flights were then made to St. Louis and subsequently to Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York.
On 20 May 1927 at 7:40 in the morning, the Spirit of St. Louis took to the air again, but this time, it was heading out over the ocean bound for Paris, France, a trip of some 3600 miles (5800 km). The flight took 33.5 hours but wasn’t without its problems. The first of these was the slow acceleration, partly due to the aircraft’s weight during takeoff, as it carried 450 gallons of fuel on board, and partly because of the muddy, rain-soaked runway. However, Lindbergh managed to get the Spirit in the air and cleared telephone lines with a mere 26 feet to spare at the end of the runway. Other problems along the way include storm clouds and icing. Lindbergh was also hampered by the fact that he wasn’t particularly good at navigating by the stars, and so he used a dead reckoning system, which was complicated by the many variables that can affect such calculations, such as wind speed and direction, the weight of the aircraft, height, and airspeed. Nevertheless, at 10:22 in the evening on 21 May, Charles Lindbergh successfully landed the Spirit of St. Louis at Le Bourget Aerodrome just outside Paris, where a crowd of some 150,000 people waited to greet him.
Following his historic flight, Lindbergh was treated like a hero. The French flew the American flag, and he was presented with the Distinguished Flying Cross, and later the Medal of Honour by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge when he returned home. On 18 July 1927, he was also promoted to the rank of colonel. On January 2, 1928, he was to be featured on the cover of Time magazine when they named him their first-ever Man of the Year. An autobiography, various other books, and a world tour followed.
He became U.S. Ambassador to Mexico in 1927, and during a trip to the country’s capital in December of that year, he met Anne Morrow. The couple were married on 27 May 1929 and went on to have six children together. Charles taught Anne how to fl,y and she accompanied him on many trips, trips which had the disadvantage of keeping him away from his children, sometimes for months on end.
During the evening of 1 March 1932, one of the children, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., who was only 20 months old, was abducted from his crib at the family home in New Jersey. A ransom of $50,000 was paid, but unfortunately, Charles Junior’s remains were found in the woods not far from the house. It is this high-profile event which caused Congress to make kidnapping a federal crime in certain circumstances. A 34-year-old German immigrant called Richard Hauptmann was convicted of murder on 13 February 1934, and in April the same year, he was executed in the electric chair at Trenton State Prison. The publicity and attention created by the case caused Lindbergh to fear for his family’s safety, and for the next few years, they lived and travelled around Europe after making their way there by sea under assumed names.
In the late 1930s, Lindbergh made several trips to Nazi Germany at the behest of the United States military. During his time there, he met Hermann Goring, who presented him with the Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle, and his acceptance of it proved a controversial topic back home. Lindbergh was vehemently opposed to the United States entering the war that was to come in Europe and spoke out against the USA potentially being led to destruction in order to protect the interests of what he referred to as the British and Jewish races. A wave of criticism followed and he was accused of being anti-semitic, which he denied, but he also made clear that he believed in the supremacy of the white race as detailed in an article he wrote for Readers Digest where he said “We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races”.
In 1941, President Roosevelt, who was outraged by Lindbergh’s outspoken views on his administration, wrote to his Treasury Secretary stating, “If I should die tomorrow, I want you to know this, I am absolutely convinced Lindbergh is a Nazi”. After further disagreements with Roosevelt and following a congressional hearing, Lindbergh resigned his commission. He did seek to recommission into the USAAF after the attack on Pearl Harbour, but his request was denied.
Unable to join the military, he went to work for Ford in 1942 and then for United Aircraft in 1943, persuading them to send him to the Pacific theatre as a technical consultant, where he participated in several combat missions.
After the war, Charles Lindbergh relocated to Connecticut, where he worked as a consultant for both the Air Force and Pan American Airways. In 1954, President Eisenhower recommissioned him as a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve.
Although still married to Anne Morrow, in 1957, Lindbergh started secret affairs with three women, two of whom were sisters, and with whom he would father seven children between 1958 and 1967. The affairs and the children were miraculously kept secret by Charles and the three women until the truth was revealed by one of his daughters, who eventually figured out who her father was in the mid-1980s. She made her findings public after Anne and Charles had both died, and her claims were later validated through DNA analysis.
Charles Lindbergh finally retired to Maui, Hawaii, where on 26 August 1974, he died of lymphoma. He was 72 years old.
Charles Lindbergh FAQ
Charles Lindbergh was an American aviator who became an international hero in 1927 when he completed the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in the aircraft Spirit of St. Louis.
His 33.5-hour flight from New York to Paris demonstrated the potential of long-distance air travel, captivated the world, and marked a significant milestone in aviation history.
In 1932, Lindbergh’s infant son was kidnapped and later found murdered in a case that shocked the world. It led to the “Lindbergh Law,” making kidnapping a federal offence in the United States.
Yes. Lindbergh was a controversial figure in later years for his isolationist views and opposition to U.S. involvement in World War II, though he later supported the war effort after Pearl Harbor.
[this article originally appeared on 5MinuteBiographies.com on 30 August 2018]
