Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh stared at a huge field of glowing lights near Paris in May 1927 and took it for a giant industrial complex. He had just flown alone across the Atlantic, and the airfield he was hunting was not on his map. All he knew was that it lay about seven miles northeast of the city. The glare was something else entirely. It came from the headlights of tens of thousands of cars. They were caught in what was called the largest traffic jam in Paris history, all trying to witness his landing.
Within hours he was one of the most famous people on earth. Within five years he would lose a child to a crime that gripped the nation. Little more than a decade after that, he would be publicly rebuked by a president for his views on the coming war. How did a little-known mail pilot with a small budget beat rivals who had far more money? What did fame do to an intensely private man? And how does a hero honored by kings and presidents end up so bitterly disputed?
Lindbergh was born in Detroit on the 4th of February 1902, and he never stayed anywhere for long. He attended more than a dozen schools as a boy, none for more than two years. They ranged from the Force School and Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., to Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, California. He finally graduated from Little Falls High School in Minnesota on the 5th of June 1918.
His father, Charles August Lindbergh, was born Carl Månsson and arrived in Melrose, Minnesota, from Sweden as an infant. He served in Congress from 1907 to 1917 and was one of the few members to oppose American entry into World War I. His mother, Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh, taught chemistry at Cass Technical High School in Detroit and later at Little Falls High School. The couple separated in 1909, when their only child was seven. He also had three elder half-sisters on his father's side: Lillian, Edith, and Eva.
In late 1920 Lindbergh entered the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but he dropped out in the middle of his sophomore year. Machines had always pulled at him, starting with the family's Saxon Six automobile and later his Excelsior motorbike. By then flying fascinated him too, though he admitted he had never been near enough to an airplane to touch one.
After quitting college in February 1922, he enrolled at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation's flying school in Lincoln. On the 9th of April he flew for the first time, as a passenger in a two-seat Lincoln Standard Tourabout biplane piloted by Otto Timm. A few days later he took his first lesson in that same aircraft. He was never allowed to solo, because he could not afford the required damage bond.
To earn money and flying time, Lindbergh left Lincoln in June and spent months barnstorming as a wing walker and parachutist across Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. He also worked briefly as a mechanic at the municipal airport in Billings, Montana. When winter came he stopped flying and returned to his father's home in Minnesota.
May 1923 brought his first solo flight, at Souther Field in Americus, Georgia, a former Army flight-training field. Lindbergh paid $500 for a surplus World War I Curtiss JN-4 Jenny biplane. He had not touched an airplane in over six months, and he had secretly resolved to fly it alone. After half an hour of instruction with a visiting pilot, he took off solo. About a week of practice later, he had logged five hours as pilot in command. He then flew some 140 miles west to Montgomery, Alabama, on his first solo cross-country trip.
Barnstorming under the name Daredevil Lindbergh filled most of the rest of 1923. A few weeks after leaving Americus he made his first night flight, near Lake Village, Arkansas. In Lone Rock, Wisconsin, he twice flew a local physician across the Wisconsin River to emergency calls that floods had put out of reach. He broke propellers while landing several times. On the 3rd of June 1923 he ran into a ditch in Glencoe, Minnesota, while flying his father, who was then running for the U.S. Senate. The mishap grounded Lindbergh for a week.
In October he sold the Jenny to a flying student in Iowa and took a train back to Lincoln. There he joined Leon Klink, and the two barnstormed through the South in Klink's Curtiss JN-4C Canuck, the Canadian version of the Jenny. When the engine failed just after takeoff in Pensacola, Florida, Lindbergh cracked up the plane and repaired it himself. The pair parted company in San Antonio, Texas.
On the 19th of March 1924 Lindbergh reported to Brooks Field in San Antonio to begin a year of Army Air Service flight training, which continued at nearby Kelly Field. Only 18 of the 104 cadets who started the course were still there a year later. Eight days before graduation, on the 5th of March 1925, a mid-air collision with another S.E.5 during combat maneuvers forced him to bail out. He still graduated first overall, earning his wings and a second lieutenant's commission in the Air Service Reserve Corps. He later said that year shaped him into a focused, goal-oriented person as well as a pilot.
The Army had no need of more active-duty pilots, so Lindbergh went back to barnstorming and instructing. He kept up some part-time military flying with the 110th Observation Squadron of the Missouri National Guard in St. Louis. He rose to first lieutenant on the 7th of December 1925 and to captain in July 1926.
In October 1925 the Robertson Aircraft Corporation hired Lindbergh, who had been instructing at Lambert-St. Louis Flying Field in Anglum, Missouri. His job was to lay out and then fly Contract Air Mail Route #2, a 278-mile run between St. Louis and Chicago's Maywood Field with stops in Springfield and Peoria. He and three other pilots flew modified war-surplus de Havilland DH-4s. Lindbergh took the Post Office Department's Oath of Mail Messengers on the 13th of April 1926 and opened the route two days later. Twice, bad weather, equipment failure, and fuel exhaustion forced him to bail out in the dark while approaching Chicago. Both times he reached the ground without serious injury.
In 1919, British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first nonstop transatlantic flight. They left St. John's, Newfoundland, on the 14th of June and reached Clifden, County Galway, Ireland, the following day. Around then, French-born New York hotelier Raymond Orteig was approached by Augustus Post, secretary of the Aero Club of America. Post wanted a $25,000 award for the first nonstop flight specifically between New York City and Paris, to be claimed within five years.
The five years lapsed in 1924 without a serious attempt, so Orteig renewed the offer for five more. This time it drew well-known, highly experienced, and well-financed contenders. None of them succeeded, and several paid dearly.
On the 21st of September 1926, the Sikorsky S-35 of French World War I flying ace René Fonck crashed on takeoff from Roosevelt Field in New York. Crew members Jacob Islamoff and Charles Clavier were killed. On the 26th of April 1927, U.S. Naval aviators Noel Davis and Stanton H. Wooster died at Langley Field, Virginia, while testing their Keystone Pathfinder. On the 8th of May, French war heroes Charles Nungesser and François Coli took off from Paris - Le Bourget Airport in a Levasseur PL 8 seaplane named L'Oiseau Blanc. They vanished somewhere over the Atlantic.
Fonck's crash was the event that pushed Lindbergh to try. Reading about it, he concluded that "a nonstop flight between New York and Paris would be less hazardous than flying mail for a single winter." He talked the idea over with St. Louis businessmen and aviation supporters and began asking airplane manufacturers what they could build.
Because Lindbergh was an unknown, raising money was hard. Two St. Louis businessmen obtained a $15,000 bank loan. Lindbergh added $2,000 from his air mail salary, and the Robertson company donated another $1,000. The total of $18,000 was far less than his rivals had to spend.
The group tried to buy a ready-made monoplane from Wright Aeronautical, then Travel Air, and finally the newly formed Columbia Aircraft Corporation. All three insisted on choosing the pilot as a condition of sale. Only the much smaller Ryan Airline Company of San Diego agreed to design and build a custom plane, for $10,580. The deal was formally closed on the 25th of February 1927.
The result was the Spirit of St. Louis, a fabric-covered, single-seat, single-engine, high-wing monoplane. Lindbergh designed it jointly with Ryan's chief engineer, Donald A. Hall. It first flew just two months later. After a series of test flights, Lindbergh took off from San Diego on the 10th of May, stopped in St. Louis, and then reached Roosevelt Field on Long Island, where the attempt would begin.
Rain fell on Long Island the night before Friday the 20th of May 1927, and Lindbergh lay down for no more than a couple of hours. He told of being unable to sleep anyway. As his plane was wheeled onto the runway, the rain stopped and light broke through low clouds. A crowd described as nearly a thousand, or several thousand, had gathered to see him go.
The Spirit carried 450 US gallons of fuel, filtered repeatedly to prevent blockages in the fuel line. That was a thousand pounds more than it had ever lifted in a test flight, and the loaded plane weighed 5200 pounds. The runway was muddy and soaked. Men pushed at the wing struts, and the last of them let go only 100 yards down the strip. The Spirit gained speed slowly after its 7:52 AM takeoff and cleared the telephone lines at the far end by about 20 feet.
At 8:52 AM Lindbergh was over Rhode Island at 500 feet, after some turbulence over Long Island Sound and Connecticut. By 9:52 AM he had passed Boston, with Cape Cod on his right, at 107 miles per hour and only 150 feet up. About an hour later he began to feel tired, even though few hours had passed. To keep his mind clear he dropped to just 10 feet above the water. By 11:52 AM he was 400 miles from New York, and after crossing the Gulf of Maine and reaching Nova Scotia he was only 6 miles, or 2 degrees, off course.
At 3:52 PM the eastern coast of Cape Breton Island passed below. He struggled to stay awake, though it was only the afternoon of the first day. At 5:52 PM he was following the Newfoundland coast, and he passed St. John's at 7:15 PM. A cable printed in The New York Times said he was seen by hundreds and disappeared seaward, flying quite low between the hills, heading for Ireland.
Stars appeared around 8:00 PM. Fog hid the sea, so Lindbergh climbed from 800 feet to 7500 feet to stay above the rising cloud, and an hour later he was at 10000 feet. A towering thunderhead blocked his path. He flew into it, then turned back when he saw ice forming on the plane. Inside the cloud he thrust a bare hand through the cockpit window and felt the sting of ice particles. By 11:52 PM the air was warmer and the ice was gone. He was flying 90 miles per hour at 10000 feet, 500 miles out from Newfoundland.
Eighteen hours in, Lindbergh was halfway to Paris. He had planned to celebrate at this point, but he felt only dread. Because he was crossing time zones, dawn came early, around 2:52 AM. About two hours later he began to hallucinate. He kept falling asleep and waking seconds, possibly minutes, later. After hours in or above fog, the weather finally cleared. At 7:52 AM he had been in the air for 24 hours, and he felt less tired. About 27 hours after leaving Roosevelt Field he saw porpoises and fishing boats, a sign that he had reached the far side. He circled low, but no fishermen appeared on deck, though he did see a face watching from a porthole.
Dingle Bay, in County Kerry in southwest Ireland, was the first European land he met. He veered for a closer look, checked his charts, and identified the southern tip of Ireland. The local time was 3:00 PM. The Spirit was 2.5 hours ahead of schedule and less than 3 miles off course. He had hit almost exactly the coastal point he had marked on his chart.
Lindbergh wanted to reach the French coast in daylight, so he raised his speed to 110 miles per hour. A report from Plymouth said his plane had begun crossing the English Channel. News spread across Europe and the United States that he had been spotted over England, and a crowd began forming at Le Bourget. At sunset he crossed Cherbourg on the French coast, 200 miles from Paris.
He had done it all by dead reckoning, working out his position from speed, heading and time. He was not skilled at navigating by the sun and stars, and he had rejected radio gear as heavy and unreliable. Luck helped. The winds over the Atlantic canceled each other out, so he suffered zero drift over the featureless ocean.
Over Paris he circled the Eiffel Tower before heading for the airfield. He flew over the crowd at 10:16 PM and landed at 10:22 PM on Saturday the 21st of May, on the far side of the field, nearly half a mile from the spectators. A crowd estimated at 150,000 stormed onto the field, pulled him from the cockpit, and carried him overhead for nearly half an hour. Souvenir hunters stripped what they could from the plane and cut pieces of linen from it. Then a squad of soldiers with fixed bayonets surrounded it and guarded it as it was wheeled into a shed.
French military fliers, soldiers and police helped get Lindbergh across the field to U.S. Ambassador Myron T. Herrick. They met in a little room with a few chairs and an army cot, with the lights off to hide his presence from the frenzied crowd. Lindbergh handed Herrick several letters he had carried across the ocean. Three were letters of introduction from Col. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., written at Lindbergh's request. He left the airfield around midnight and stopped to visit the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. At the ambassador's residence he slept for the first time in about 60 hours. The National Aeronautic Association later certified the flight from the readings of a sealed barograph aboard the Spirit.
The New York Times ran a page-wide, above-the-fold headline: "Lindbergh Does It!" Biographer A. Scott Berg wrote that people were "behaving as though Lindbergh had walked on water, not flown over it". A crowd reported at nearly a thousand surrounded his mother's house in Detroit. He received marriage proposals, thousands of gifts and letters, and invitations from cities across the nation. At least 200 songs were written in his honor. "Lucky Lindy!", by L. Wolfe Gilbert and Abel Baer, was finished on the 21st of May itself and performed that night in several Manhattan clubs.
On the morning after his landing, Lindbergh appeared on the balcony of the U.S. embassy in Paris and answered the crowd briefly and modestly. The French Foreign Office flew the American flag, the first time it had saluted anyone who was not a head of state. At the Élysée Palace, French President Gaston Doumergue pinned the Légion d'honneur to his lapel.
On the 28th of May Lindbergh flew to Evere Aerodrome in Brussels. A thousand children waved American flags, and a ten-plane escort struggled to keep pace with the Spirit. Belgian Prime Minister Henri Jaspar led the procession, and King Albert I made Lindbergh a Knight of the Order of Leopold. The United Press reported that one million people were in Brussels to greet him. Belgian troops with fixed bayonets guarded the plane to prevent a repeat of the damage in Paris.
Croydon Air Field in Britain, on the 29th of May, was wilder still. A crowd of 100,000 swept past the guard lines, and Lindbergh had to circle for about ten minutes while police cleared a space to land. The United Press reported that a man's leg was broken in the crush. "All I can say is that this is worse than what happened at Le Bourget Field", Lindbergh told the crowd. "But all the same, I'm glad to be here." His first words to the officials waiting inside were: "Save my plane!"
On the 31st of May he visited Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin at 10 Downing Street. Then he went to Buckingham Palace, where King George V received him and awarded him the British Air Force Cross. The crowd outside grew so large that police called in reserves from Scotland Yard.
On the 11th of June 1927 a U.S. Navy cruiser brought him home, and a fleet of warships and military aircraft escorted him up the Potomac River to the Washington Navy Yard. President Calvin Coolidge awarded him the first Distinguished Flying Cross. The award broke the rules, because Coolidge's own executive order required that recipients earn it on a flight made as part of Organized Reserves duties.
On the 13th of June, Lindbergh arrived in Lower Manhattan and rode up the Canyon of Heroes to City Hall, where Mayor Jimmy Walker received him. A ticker-tape parade followed to Central Park Mall, where Governor Al Smith hosted a ceremony and a crowd of 200,000 watched him receive the New York Medal for Valor. Some 4,000,000 people saw him that day. A banquet for 500 guests at Clarence MacKay's Harbor Hill estate followed that evening, and a dinner for some 3,700 at the Hotel Commodore the next night. He was officially awarded the check for the prize on the 16th of June.
On the 18th of July 1927 Lindbergh was promoted to colonel in the Air Corps of the Officers Reserve Corps. On the 14th of December a Special Act of Congress awarded him the Medal of Honor, an award almost always given for combat heroism. Coolidge presented it at the White House on the 21st of March 1928. It clashed with Coolidge's order against giving more than one decoration for the same act, and the House reportedly neglected to count its votes on the bill.
Time magazine put him on its cover on the 2nd of January 1928 as its first Man of the Year, now called Person of the Year. He was 25, and he remained the youngest honoree until Greta Thunberg in 2019. Aviator Elinor Smith Sullivan, winner of the 1930 Best Woman Aviator of the Year Award, recalled that people used to treat flyers as if they were from outer space. After Lindbergh's flight, she said, "all of a sudden the Wall Streeters were banging on doors looking for airplanes to invest in."
Barely two months after Paris, G. P. Putnam's Sons published his 318-page autobiography, "WE". It was the first of 15 books he wrote or substantially contributed to. The publisher, run by aviation enthusiast George P. Putnam, chose the title without Lindbergh's approval. He complained about it forever, saying his "we" meant himself and his backers, not himself and his plane. Special autographed copies sold for $25 each and were all bought before publication. The book sold more than 650,000 copies in its first year and earned him more than $250,000.
Sales were helped by a three-month tour of the United States in the Spirit for the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. Between the 20th of July and the 23rd of October 1927, Lindbergh visited 82 cities in all 48 states. He flew 22,350 miles, rode 1290 miles in parades, and gave 147 speeches before 30 million people. From the 13th of December 1927 to the 8th of February 1928, a Good Will Tour took him to 16 Latin American countries, from Mexico to Cuba.
He also used his fame to push the air mail. In February 1928 he carried about 3,000 pieces of souvenir mail between Santo Domingo, Port-au-Prince, and Havana at the request of Basil L. Rowe. They were the only stamped mail he ever flew in the Spirit. On the 20th and the 21st of February he flew special trips over his old St. Louis-Chicago route. Tens of thousands of souvenir covers poured in from around the world, so he switched among the three planes he and his fellow pilots had used, to let every envelope claim his flight.
On the 10th of March 1929, Lindbergh flew a Ford Trimotor with U.S. mail from Brownsville, Texas, to Mexico City via Tampico. When mail bags went missing for a month, stamp collectors began calling them the covers of the Lost Mail Flight. Meanwhile, the boom he had set off was real. Within six months the volume of mail carried by air rose 50 percent, applications for pilots' licenses tripled, and the number of planes quadrupled. In 1929 President Herbert Hoover appointed him to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
In the summer of 1931, with the backing of Pan American World Airways head Juan Trippe, Lindbergh and his wife flew a Lockheed Model 8 Sirius named Tingmissartoq from Long Island to Nome, Alaska, and on to Siberia, Japan, and China. They aimed to prove an air route across Alaska and Siberia. In China they volunteered to help with relief efforts after the Central China flood of 1931. The route could not carry commercial service until after World War II, because prewar aircraft could not fly nonstop from Alaska to Japan, and the United States did not officially recognize the Soviet government.
In December 1927, on a goodwill visit to Mexico City, Lindbergh met Anne Morrow. Her father, Dwight Morrow, was a partner at J.P. Morgan & Co. who had acted as Lindbergh's financial adviser, and he was then the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. The two married on the 27th of May 1929 at the Morrow estate in Englewood, New Jersey. Lindbergh had written in his autobiography that his ideal partner would have a keen mind, good health and strong genes, crediting his experience breeding animals on the family farm.
The couple had six children: Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., who lived from 1930 to 1932; Jon Morrow Lindbergh; Land Morrow Lindbergh; Anne Lindbergh; Scott Lindbergh; and Reeve Lindbergh, who became a writer. Lindbergh taught Anne to fly, and she assisted him in much of his exploring and charting of air routes. In 1930 she became the first woman to receive a U.S. glider pilot license. At home he was strict. He kept a record of each child's infractions, down to chewing gum, and insisted that Anne track every penny of household spending. He saw his children for only a few months a year.
On the evening of the 1st of March 1932, twenty-month-old Charles Jr. was taken from his crib at Highfields, the family's rural home in East Amwell, New Jersey, near the town of Hopewell. A man claiming to be the kidnapper collected a $50,000 ransom on the 2nd of April. Part of it was paid in gold certificates that were soon to be withdrawn, which would make them easy to spot, and the serial numbers were recorded. On the 12th of May the child's remains were found in woods not far from the house.
The press called it the Crime of the Century, and H. L. Mencken described it as "the biggest story since the Resurrection". Congress responded with the so-called Lindbergh Law, which made kidnapping a federal offense when a victim is taken across state lines or when the kidnapper uses the mail or interstate commerce, as in demanding a ransom.
On the 19th of September 1934, police arrested Richard Hauptmann, a 34-year-old German immigrant carpenter, near his home in the Bronx after he paid for gasoline with one of the ransom bills. Investigators found $13,760 of the ransom money and other evidence in his home. His trial for kidnapping, murder and extortion began in Flemington, New Jersey, on the 2nd of January 1935 in a circus-like atmosphere. He was convicted on the 13th of February and electrocuted at Trenton State Prison on the 3rd of April 1936. His guilt is still contested.
Before the dawn of Sunday the 22nd of December 1935, the Lindberghs slipped out of Manhattan on the freighter SS American Importer, the only three passengers aboard. They traveled under assumed names with diplomatic passports obtained through the intervention of former Treasury Secretary Ogden L. Mills. Their flight to Europe stayed secret for a full day, and radiograms sent to Lindbergh aboard the ship came back marked "Addressee not aboard". Lindbergh was exasperated by the constant attention and worried for the safety of his three-year-old son Jon.
They reached Liverpool on the 31st of December and went on to stay with relatives in South Wales. The family later rented a house called Long Barn in Sevenoaks Weald, Kent, and a third son, Land, was born in London in May 1937. In 1938 they moved to Île Illiec, a 4-acre island off the Breton coast of France that Lindbergh had bought.
In 1931 the Longines watch company first produced the Lindbergh Hour Angle watch, which Lindbergh had designed on paper to make navigation easier for pilots. It is still in production today.
In 1929 he became interested in the work of rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard. In 1930 he helped Goddard win an endowment from Daniel Guggenheim, which let Goddard expand his research and development. Lindbergh remained a key advocate of Goddard's work for the rest of his life.
A personal loss pushed him toward medicine. In 1930 his sister-in-law developed a fatal heart condition, and Lindbergh began to wonder why hearts could not be repaired by surgery. In early 1931, at the Rockefeller Institute, he started studying the perfusion of organs outside the body with the Nobel Prize-winning French surgeon Alexis Carrel. The work continued while Lindbergh lived in France. Organs kept alive this way survived surprisingly well, yet all of them showed progressive degeneration within a few days.
Lindbergh's glass perfusion pump, called the Model T pump, is credited with making later heart surgery possible. In 1938 he and Carrel described an artificial heart in their book The Culture of Organs, though decades passed before anyone built one. The pump appeared on the cover of Time on the 13th of June 1938. At the 1939 World's Fair it was billed as the Lindbergh-Carrel mechanical heart and became a focal point of the Medicine and Public Health Buildings. Other researchers later developed the idea further, eventually leading to the first heart-lung machine.
The pump's own fate was less glamorous. By 2017 the American Academy of Cardiovascular Perfusion acknowledged that most researchers had found the Lindbergh-Carrel pump impractical and difficult to use. In the academy's words, by the early 1940s the pump's time in the spotlight had run out. Carrel himself would soon matter to Lindbergh in a very different way.
In July 1936, just before the Berlin Olympics, the American journalist William L. Shirer wrote in his diary: "The Lindberghs are here, and the Nazis, led by Göring, are making a great play for them." That visit was the first of several Lindbergh made between 1936 and 1938 at the request of the U.S. military, to size up German aviation. Lufthansa held a tea for the couple and took them for a ride aboard the huge four-engine Junkers G.38 named Field-Marshal von Hindenburg. Over Wannsee, Shirer recalled, Lindbergh took the controls and put the plane through steep banks that terrified most of the passengers.
In 1937 Hanna Reitsch demonstrated the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 helicopter for him. He became the first American to examine the Junkers Ju 88 bomber and was allowed to pilot the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter. In April 1939, General H. H. "Hap" Arnold personally asked him to return from Europe for a temporary spell of active duty, to help assess the Air Corps's readiness. There is disagreement over how accurate his reports were, but the consensus among British and American officials was that they were slightly exaggerated but badly needed. Arnold later wrote that nobody gave the Americans much useful information about Hitler's air force until Lindbergh came home in 1939.
In 1938 U.S. Ambassador Hugh Wilson hosted a dinner for Lindbergh with Hermann Göring, Germany's air chief, and aviation figures Ernst Heinkel, Adolf Baeumker, and Willy Messerschmitt. At the table Göring presented Lindbergh with the Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle. A few weeks later came Kristallnacht, a nationwide anti-Jewish pogrom now seen as a key opening event of the Holocaust. Lindbergh refused to return the medal. He wrote that returning decorations given in peacetime as a gesture of friendship would be an unnecessary insult, adding that he saw no gain in "a spitting contest" before a war began. Ambassador Wilson later told him that refusing the award at that dinner would have been a breach of good taste.
Of Kristallnacht he wrote in his diary: "I do not understand these riots on the part of the Germans." He thought them contrary to German order and intelligence. He had planned to spend the winter of 1938-39 in Berlin and had found a house in Wannsee. Nazi friends discouraged him from leasing it because Jews had owned it, and Albert Speer offered to build the family a house anywhere they wished. On the advice of his close friend Alexis Carrel, Lindbergh cancelled the trip.
In September 1938 he told the French cabinet that the Luftwaffe had 8,000 aircraft and could build 1,500 a month. The real number was about one-seventh of that, according to the French intelligence service, the Deuxième Bureau. Even so, his claim helped push France to avoid conflict with Germany through the Munich Agreement. At the urging of U.S. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, he also wrote a secret memo warning Britain that a military response to Hitler would be disastrous. He urged Britain and France to build up their air power so that Hitler would turn his aggression against "Asiatic Communism".
In August 1939 the physicist Leo Szilard hoped to use Lindbergh to reach President Roosevelt about the potential of nuclear fission. Einstein, who had met Lindbergh before, wrote a letter urging the aviator to meet Szilard. Lindbergh answered neither that letter nor a follow-up from Szilard on the 13th of September. Two days later he gave a nationwide radio address calling for American isolationism, which according to biographer Walter Isaacson carried pro-German sympathies and antisemitic implications. Szilard wrote to Einstein: "Lindbergh is not our man."
In late 1940 Lindbergh became the spokesman of the America First Committee. He spoke to overflow crowds at Madison Square Garden and Chicago's Soldier Field, with millions listening by radio. In 1941 he told a House committee opposing the Lend-Lease bill that the United States should negotiate a neutrality pact with Germany. Roosevelt publicly called his views those of a "defeatist and appeaser". On the 28th of April 1941 Lindbergh resigned his colonel's commission, saying he saw "no honorable alternative" now that the president had publicly questioned his loyalty.
On the 11th of September 1941 he spoke at an America First rally at the Des Moines Coliseum. He accused three groups of "pressing this country toward war; the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration". Biographer A. Scott Berg called the three paragraphs about American Jews the core of his thesis. Jews did not make up even 3 percent of newspaper publishers, yet he claimed outsized Jewish control of government and the press. Newspapers, politicians, and clergy across the country condemned the speech.
Roosevelt told Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau he was absolutely convinced that Lindbergh was a Nazi. Lindbergh's friend Henry Ford, the automaker, told an FBI agent in 1940 that when Charles came out to Detroit they talked only about Jews. Researcher Max Wallace called Lindbergh a well-meaning but bigoted and misguided Nazi sympathizer, though he found the administration's charges of treason unsubstantiated. Lindbergh never publicly stated support for the Nazis, and he condemned them several times in speeches and in his diary. After the war he toured a Nazi concentration camp and asked in his diary how any national progress could justify such a place.
After Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war on the United States, Lindbergh eagerly backed the war effort. Active duty was closed to him because Roosevelt refused to restore his colonel's commission. Instead he flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific Theater as a civilian consultant, and he was unofficially credited with shooting down an enemy aircraft. In 1954 President Dwight Eisenhower restored his commission and promoted him to brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve.
In his later years Lindbergh won a Pulitzer Prize as an author and worked as an explorer and environmentalist. He helped establish national parks in the United States and worked to protect endangered species and tribal people in the Philippines and east Africa. After retiring to Maui, he died of lymphoma in 1974, at the age of 72. The Spirit of St. Louis, which he flew to Washington, D.C., in 1928, still hangs on public display at the Smithsonian Institution.
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Common questions
When did Charles Lindbergh fly across the Atlantic?
Charles Lindbergh flew from Roosevelt Field on Long Island to Le Bourget near Paris on the 20th and the 21st of May 1927. He flew alone for over 33 hours and landed at 10:22 PM Paris time on Saturday the 21st of May.
What was the Orteig Prize that Charles Lindbergh won?
The Orteig Prize was a $25,000 award offered by hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first nonstop flight between New York City and Paris. Charles Lindbergh was officially awarded the check on the 16th of June 1927.
What plane did Charles Lindbergh fly to Paris?
Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis, a single-seat, single-engine, high-wing monoplane. The Ryan Airline Company of San Diego built it for $10,580, and Lindbergh designed it jointly with chief engineer Donald A. Hall. It is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
What happened to Charles Lindbergh's son?
Charles Lindbergh Jr., aged twenty months, was kidnapped from the family home in East Amwell, New Jersey, on the 1st of March 1932. His remains were found on the 12th of May. The case led Congress to pass the Lindbergh Law, making certain kidnappings a federal offense.
Why was Charles Lindbergh accused of being a Nazi sympathizer?
Charles Lindbergh accepted a German medal from Hermann Göring in 1938, opposed American entry into World War II, and spoke for the America First Committee. His September 1941 Des Moines speech blamed the British, Jews, and the Roosevelt Administration for pushing the country toward war. He never publicly stated support for the Nazis and condemned them several times.
How did Charles Lindbergh die?
Charles Lindbergh died of lymphoma in 1974 at the age of 72, after retiring to Maui. In his later years he had become a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and an environmentalist.
All sources
380 references cited across the entry
- 1Every and Tracy 1927, pp. 60, 84, 99, 208.
- 2Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr.Congressional Medal of Honor Society
- 3Charles A. Lindbergh (USA) (14842)World Air Sports Federation — October 10, 2017
- 4Remembering the Lindbergh Perfusion PumpThe Academy Newsletter — American Academy of Cardiovascular Perfusion — Summer 2017
- 6NewsColonel Lindbergh On Combat MissionsOctober 23, 1944
- 7NewsLindbergh Is Named A Brigadier General; Lindbergh Named Reserve GeneralFebruary 16, 1954
- 9Larson 1973, pp. 31–32.
- 11Larson 1973, pp. 208–209.
- 12Lindbergh 1927, pp. 19–22.
- 13Lindbergh 1927, pp. 22–25.
- 14Lindbergh 1927, p. 23.
- 15Lindbergh 1927, p. 25.
- 16Lindbergh 1927, pp. 26–28.
- 17Lindbergh 1927, pp. 29–36.
- 19Lindbergh 1927, pp. 36–37.
- 20Lindbergh 1927, pp. 39–43.
- 22Lindbergh 1927, pp. 43–44.
- 23Lindbergh 1927, pp. 44–45.
- 25Lindbergh 1927, pp. 63–65.
- 26Smith, Susan Lampert "Dr. Bertha Stories: Dr. Bertha's Decades in the River Valley Included remarkable Medical Feats". Wisconsin State Journal, April 20, 2003.
- 27Lindbergh 1927, pp. 84–93.
- 28Berg 1998, p. 73.
- 29Lindbergh 1927, pp. 144–148.
- 30Moseley 1976, p. 56.
- 31Official National Guard Register. 1927. p. 529.
- 32Berg 1998, p. 488.
- 36Lindbergh 1927, pp. 185–7, 192–3
- 37Lindbergh 1953, pp. 6–8.
- 38Lindbergh 1927, pp. 185–193
- 39Lindbergh 1953, p. 79.
- 42Lindbergh 1953, pp. 31, 74.
- 43BookAtlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the AtlanticJoe Jackson — Macmillan — 2012
- 48Lindbergh 1953, pp. 25, 31.
- 52Lindbergh 1953, pp. 85–86.
- 53Hall, Nova "Spirit & Creator: The Mysterious Man Behind Lindbergh's Flight to Paris". Sheffield, MA:ATN Publishing (2002) p. 68
- 54Lindbergh 1953, pp. 134.
- 55Charles Lindbergh completes the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flightFebruary 9, 2010
- 56First Pictures Of Lindbergh As He Reaches Paris In Flight From New YorkAP Archive — July 24, 2015
- 58Lindbergh, the Little Plane, the Big AtlanticGeorge Waller — May 20, 1962
- 59Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt FieldJuly 15, 2016
- 61BookAtlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the AtlanticJoe Jackson — Farrar, Straus and Giroux — 2012
- 62Lindbergh 1927, p. 216.
- 66Great Circle Sailing Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean.January 1926
- 68BookLindbergh AloneBrendan Gill — Minnesota Historical Society Press — 1977
- 69In the 1920s, Only One Man Held the Key to Aerial NavigationRoger Connor — February 2013
- 70The Science, History, And Romance Behind The Longines Lindbergh Hour Angle WatchJack Forster — September 2, 2015
- 72Lindbergh 1927, pp. 218–222.
- 73Bryson, Bill, "The Redeeming Spirit of Sr. Louis", The Sunday Times, September 15, 2013, News Review. p. 2. (from:, Bryson. B. One Summer: America, 1927, 2013, New York, Doubleday.
- 74Lindbergh 1927, pp. 224–226.
- 79The Milwaukee Sentinel – June 23, 1929
- 80A. Scott Berg, as cited in Belfiore 2007, p. 17.
- 81NewsLindbergh Does It! To Paris in 33 1/2 Hours; Flies 1,000 Miles Through Snow and Sleet; Cheering French Carry Him Off FieldEdwin L. James — May 22, 1927
- 86Costigliola 1984, p. 180.
- 88BookThe Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American AviationThomas Kessner — Oxford University Press — July 20, 2010
- 89Lindbergh welcomed in BelgiumUnited Press International, Inc. — May 28, 1927
- 91NewsCroydon Battle to Welcome Atlantic HeroMay 30, 1927
- 92Historic Croydon AirportTavis Basing
- 94Thousands greet Lindbergh in London - UPI ArchivesUnited Press International, Inc. — May 30, 1927
- 96Air Force Cross is Conferred Upon LindberghH. K. Reynolds — May 31, 1927
- 98Mosley 1976, p. 117.
- 99Lindbergh 1927, pp. 267–268.
- 100Mears, Medal of Honor, 90-91
- 102Stock Footage - Charles Lindbergh. 1927. Crowds. Parade. Tickertape. Police / NYC CelebrateMyFootage.com — June 23, 2011
- 104"Lindbergh Parade Has 10,000 Troops; Soldiers, Sailors and Marines Precede Flier From Battery to Central Park". The New York Times, June 14, 1927, p. 4.
- 105"Radio Keeps Pace with Lindbergh; Announcers Along Route Tell of His Progress, Noise Drowning Their Voices at Times. Every Detail Is Covered; 15,000,000 Are Thus Able to Take Part in Welcome and Escap
- 106Bill Bryson, "One Summer: America, 1927" (Doubleday 1913)
- 107"Cheers of 3,700 Acclaim Lindbergh as City Gives Great Dinner for Him". The New York Times, June 15, 1927, p. 1.
- 109National Guard Register, 1928. p. 529.
- 111The New York Times. March 22, 1928.
- 112Mears, Medal of Honor, 91
- 113Mears, Medal of Honor, 138
- 114NewsCharles Lindbergh to Angela Merkel: Time's Person of the Year through the agesSaffron Alexander — December 19, 2015
- 115Jennings and Brewster 1998, p. 420.
- 117Wohl, Robert. The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1920–1950. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2005. p. 35.
- 118Lindbergh, Charles A. "WE" (with an appendix entitled "A Little of what the World thought of Lindbergh" by Fitzhugh Green, pp. 233–318). New York & London: G. P. Putnam's Sons (The Knickerbocker Press
- 119Berg (1998) Chapt 7
- 120Berg 1998, Chapter 7, Kindle location 3548–3555
- 121"Lindbergh Flies to Museum With Spirit of St. Louis Today", The New York Times April 30, 1928, p. 1
- 123Cole 1974, p. 67.
- 126Streit, Clerence K. "Lindbergh Lands at Port-au-Prince as New Discoverer". The New York Times, February 7, 1928, p. 1.
- 128"Lindbergh Flies His Old Mail Route". The New York Times, February 21, 1928, p. 13.
- 129"The American Air Mail Catalogue" Fifth Edition, Volume 3, pp. 1418–1455 The American Air Mail Society (1978)
- 130Lindbergh Foundation, Essay
- 131Pan Am Historical Foundation, Essay
- 132Lindbergh 1977, p. 121.
- 133Lindbergh 1977, p. 118.
- 134BookNew Jersey Trivia.Rutledge Hill Press — 1993
- 136Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 27, 1960, p. 13
- 139NewsVehicle Developer Shifts Focus To Fill eVTOL Propulsion GapGraham Warwick — August 6, 2018
- 140Lindbergh Continues Glider Flight HereMarch 14, 1930
- 141A History of Ranching in Carmel ValleyJeff Ohlson — June 15, 2021
- 142Giant California ranch for sale - with caveatDecember 3, 1995
- 143BookStories of Old Carmel: A Centennial Tribute From The Carmel Residents AssociationRichard Flower — The Carmel Residents Association — 2014
- 151NewsThe Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping: A Grisly Theory and a Renewed DebateTracey Tully — March 5, 2024
- 152Berg, A. Scott (Author of the 1998 biography Lindbergh) Booknotes (Interview conducted by Brian Lamb) C-SPAN, November 20, 1998.
- 154Lyman, Lauren D. "Press Calls For Action: Hopes the Public Will Be Roused to Wipe Out a 'National Disgrace. The New York Times, December 24, 1935, p. 1.
- 155Ahlgren and Monier 1993, p. 194.
- 156"A Family Seeks Safety", The Literary Digest January 4, 1936, p. 27
- 157"Shipping and Mails" The New York Times December 22, 1935, p. S8.
- 159Milton 1993, p. 342.
- 160Walker, Stanley. "What Makes a Good Reporter?", The American Mercury. February 1946, p. 211.
- 161Lyman, Lauren D. "Lindbergh Family Sails for England To Seek a Safe, Secluded Residence; Threats on Son's Life Force Decision". The New York Times, December 23, 1935, p. 1.
- 163Lindberghs Rest in English Hotel: They Seclude Themselves in Liverpool Before Departing for South Wales Today. Flier Bars Interviews. Telescopic Cameras Used To Get Photos – Appeal for Privacy is Broa
- 164MagazineLindbergh Walks AloneFrederic Sondhern Jr. — April 3, 1939
- 166"Lindberghs Arrive Home On Surprise Holiday Visit: Try to Slip In as Secretly as They Left U. S. 2 Years Ago, but Are Recognized Leaving Ship—Silent on Their Plans Here". The New York Times, December
- 167Butterfield, Roger. "Lindbergh: A Stubborn Young Man of Strange Ideas Becomes the Leader of the Wartime Opposition". Life, August 11, 1941.
- 168"Lindbergh's Wife and Children Back: Closely Guarded by Policemen, They Speed to Morrow Home in Englewood, NJ". The New York Times, April 29, 1939, p. 14.
- 169Milton 1993, p. 375.
- 170"Lindbergh Here Guarded by Police: Declines to Meet Press to Discuss Reports About His Return Home". The New York Times, April 15, 1939, p. 8.
- 171Mosley 1976, p. 249.
- 177Frazier et al. 2004, pp. 1507–1514.
- 179Lindbergh, Carrell & PumpTime — June 13, 1938
- 181Time, January 19, 1939.
- 182William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary, ©1942 reprinted 2011 by Rosetta Books, entry for July 27, 1936
- 183Reitsch, H., 1955, The Sky My Kingdom, London: Biddles Limited, Guildford and King's Lynn,
- 184Herman, Arthur. Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, pp. 289–93, 304–5, Random House, New York .
- 185BookLindbergh vs. RooseveltJames Duffy — MJF Books — 2010
- 186BookLindbergh vs. RooseveltJames Duffy — MJF Books — 2010
- 187Cole 1974, pp. 39–40.
- 188Hitler and AmericaUniversity of Pennsylvania Press — 2011
- 189BookTapestry the history and consequences of America's complex cultureJerry Carrier — Algora Publishing — 2014
- 190Ross 2006, p. 44.
- 191Wallace 2005, p. 193.
- 192Wallace 2005, p. 175.
- 193Bouverie, Tim (2019). Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War (1 ed.). New York: Tim Duggan Books. pp. 292-293. . .
- 194Cole 1974
- 195October 13, 1939, speech excerpted in CharlesLindbergh.com
- 196Einstein: His Life and UniverseWalter Isaacson — Simon & Schuster Paperbacks — 2007
- 197BookCanada on the Doorstep: 1939William Raynor — Dundurn — 2011
- 198BookStorm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941Justus D. Doenecke — Rowman & Littlefield — 2003
- 200BookPreaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics MovementChristine Rosen — Oxford University Press — 2004
- 201Mosley 1976, p. 257.
- 202Lindbergh 1977, p. 177
- 203BookThe Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: a History of Nazi GermanyWilliam Shirer — Simon & Schuster — 2011
- 204NewsUrges Neutrality: Aviator Testifies He Wants Neither Side to Win ConflictJanuary 24, 1941
- 205NewsLindbergh Quits Air Corps; Sees His Loyalty QuestionedApril 29, 1941
- 206The Wartime Journals of Charles Lindbergh
- 207Wallace 2005, pp. 83–85.
- 208Lindbergh Said to Regret Misperceptions Over JewsHerbert Mitgang — April 20, 1980
- 209Is Lindbergh a Nazi?Leon Milton Birkhead
- 210Cole 1974, p. 131.
- 211BookLindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That Divided AmericaJames P. Duffy — Regnery Publishing — 2010
- 213MagazineEagle to EarthJanuary 12, 1942
- 214NewsLewis Lapham: Goering's Planes Made Lindbergh a Nazi ToolBloomberg News — August 9, 2013
- 215NewsFallen HeroAmerican Experience
- 216Collier and Horowitz 1987, pp. 205 and note, p. 457. The citation is from the FBI file of Harry Bennett.
- 220Cole 1974, pp. 81–82.
- 221Cole 1974, p. 82.
- 222Vital Speeches of the Day, Volume 5, pp. 751–752.
- 223Wallace 2005, p. 358.
- 224The Great DebateThe National WWII Museum New Orleans — July 11, 2018
- 225Berg 1998
- 229BookLindberghA.S. Berg — Simon & Schuster UK — 2013
- 230Berg, pp 435-437.
- 231BookFreedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War IIArthur Herman — Random House — 2012
- 232BookThe Wartime Journals of Charles A. LindberghCharles A. Lindbergh — New York : Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich — 1970
- 233Bauer, Daniel (1989) "Fifty Missions: The Combat Career of Col. Charles A. Lindbergh", Air Classics 25th Anniversary Edition, pp. 19–25, 128–130.
- 235Battle Stations: P38 Lockheed Lightning (War History Documentary)YouTube — December 17, 2015
- 237Mersky 1993, p. 93.
- 239BookThe wartime journals of Charles A. LindberghCharles A. Lindbergh — New York : Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich — 1970
- 240Of Flight and Life by Charles Lindbergh on Manhattan Rare Book Companybibliopolis.com
- 243How a dirty trick and Charles Lindbergh helped bring Air Force Academy to Colorado SpringsColorado Public Radio — April 3, 2014
- 245News' 54 Pulitzer Play Is 'Teahouse'; Lindbergh Wins Biography Prize; ' TEAHOUSE' WINS PULITZER AWARDCharles Grutzner — May 4, 1954
- 247"Private Pilot Textbook GFD". Jeppesen. Retrieved: January 19, 2011.
- 248NewsOne Step Was PlentyPaul Farhi — July 19, 2009
- 249BookCarrying the fire : an astronaut's journeysMichael Collins — Farrar, Straus and Giroux — 2009
- 250BookForward From Here: Leaving Middle Age and Other Unexpected AdventuresReeve Lindbergh — Simon & Schuster — 2008
- 252BookDas Doppelleben des Charles A. Lindbergh, Der berühmteste Flugpionier aller Zeiten – seine wahre GeschichteRudolf Schröck et al. — Wilhelm Heyne Verlag — 2005
- 253NewsAviator Lindbergh fathered children with mistressesBojan Pancevski — May 29, 2005
- 255Lindbergh letter to Brigitte Hesshaimer dated August 16, 1974, reproduced in Das Doppelleben des Charles A. Lindbergh
- 257Lindbergh, Reeve (2008) pp. 203 and 210
- 258BookCharles A. Lindbergh and the American Dilemma: The Conflict of Technology and Human ValuesSusan M. Gray — Popular Press — 1988
- 259BookCharles LindberghLucile Davis — Capstone Press — 1999
- 260BookLaurance S. Rockefeller: Catalyst For ConservationRobin W. Winks — Island Press — April 15, 2013
- 261BookModern American Environmentalists: A Biographical EncyclopediaJHU Press — June 15, 2009
- 262BookLindbergh: A BiographyLeonard Mosley — Courier Corporation — January 1, 2000
- 263NewsNames & Faces in the NewsMay 16, 1971
- 264NewsAnother 'magnificent' animal fights for rights against manAugust 26, 1971
- 265NewsPresident Marcos Honors LindberghMay 15, 1971
- 26612 April 1972Bryan R. Swopes — 2017
- 268MagazineThe Tribe Out of TimeJamie James — May 19, 2003
- 269NewsLindbergh's Party Radios For Help in the PhilippinesApril 2, 1972
- 271Retired Air Force colonel who rescued Lindbergh visits Bemidji area as part of RV tour of the MississippiDennis Doeden — May 28, 2021
- 274NewsS. F. Pryor Jr., Airline PioneerSeptember 19, 1985
- 275NewsLindbergh Dies of Cancer in Hawaii at the Age of 72August 27, 1974
- 276BookCharles A. Lindbergh and the American Dilemma: The Conflict of Technology and Human ValuesSusan M. Gray — Bowling Green State University Popular Press — 1988
- 277BookCharles A. Lindbergh and the American Dilemma: The Conflict of Technology and Human ValuesSusan M. Gray — Bowling Green State University Popular Press — 1988
- 280BookCharles Lindbergh: American Hero of FlightVirginia Meachum — Enslow — 2002
- 283Samuel F. Pryor, Pioneer Aviation IndustrialistL.A. Times Archives — September 20, 1985
- 284NewsPresident Leads the Nation in Tribute to LindberghAugust 27, 1974
- 285NewsScouts Offer Medal To Unknown SoldierApril 11, 1928
- 286Catalogue of place names in northern East GreenlandGeological Survey of Denmark
- 288MagazineThe History of Man in FlightIPC Business Press — November 16, 1972
- 294NewsLindbergh Shares Honor with WrightDecember 14, 1928
- 299Remarks on Presenting a Special Congressional Medal to Colonel Charles A. LindberghHerbert Hoover — UC Santa Barbara — August 15, 1930
- 300MagazineAround the WorldAugust 29, 1927
- 301BookThe Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American AviationThomas Kessner — Oxford University Press — July 20, 2010
- 303NewsScouts Offer Medal To Unknown SoldierApril 11, 1928
- 308NewsBELGIAN DECORATION AWAITS LINDBERGH; King Albert Will Bestow the Order of Leopold on Flier in Brussels Today.Carlyle MacDonald — May 28, 1927
- 310Silver Royal Air Force Cross Medal Given to Charles Lindbergh by King GeorgeMissouri Historical Society
- 311Silver Cross of Boyaca, Colombia, Presented to Charles LindberghMissouri Historical Society
- 312The Man Who Crossed the Seas: Charles Lindbergh's Goodwill Tour, 1927-1928Jay Raman — American Foreign Service Association — 2021
- 315BookThe Spirit of St. LouisCharles A. Lindbergh — Scribner — 1953
- 316Grand Cross of the Order of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Presented to Charles A. Lindbergh from CubaMissouri Historical Society
- 320Order of the German EagleMarcus Wendel
- 321Documento BOE-A-1927-5509Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado (Government of Spain) — June 2, 1927
- 322President's Week in Review: May 14 – May 20, 1971 GOVPHMarch 24, 1971
- 324Svenska Dagbladet yearbook: 1927, red. Erik Rudberg & Edvin Hellblom, Stockholm 1928, page 188
- 329Lindbergh, Charles A.Congressional Medal of Honor Society
- 330BookCarnegie Institution of Washington. Year Book No. 47, July 1, 1947 – June 30, 1948The Lord Baltimore Press — 1948
- 331Sprekelmeyer, Linda, editor. These We Honor: The International Aerospace Hall of Fame. Donning Co. Publishers, 2006. .
- 338Dixon, Franklin Over the Ocean to Paris New York: Grosset & Dunlop (1927) First edition dusk jacket notes.
- 341Adams, Mike "Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film" New York:Copernicus Books (2012) p. 302
- 345Phillips, Gene D. Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder (Screen Classics). Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009., p. 180.
- 346NewsJohn Kerr, Star of 'Tea and Sympathy', Dies at 81Paul Vitello — February 8, 2013
- 348Better Call Saul Recap: Waiting to ExhaleKenny Herzog — August 6, 2018
- 352Lindbergh Arrives After Record Hops, The New York Times, Front Page, May 13, 1927
- 353Bastin, Bruce, The Melody Man: Joe Davis and the New York Music Scene, 1916–1978, University Press of Mississippi, 2012
- 354Jazz Odyssey The Sound Of Harlem Volume III Original 1964 3×LP Vinyl Box Set Columbia Records C3L 33 Mono Jazz Archive Series Various Artist in High Fidelity Sound with 40-Page Booklet, produced by Fr
- 361Richard H. Minear, Dr. Seuss goes to war: the World War II editorial cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel (The New Press, 2001).
- 363BookLindberghBerg — G. P. Putnam's Sons — 1998
- 364BookOne Summer: America, 1927Bill Bryson — Doubleday — 2013
- 365BookCharles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War IICole — Harcourt Brace Jovanovich — 1974
- 366Book1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—the Election Amid the StormDunn — Yale University Press — 2013
- 367JournalPittsburgh 1941: War, Race, Biography, and HistoryDavid Goodman — October 2008
- 368Book"WE"Lindbergh — G. P. Putnam's Sons — 1927
- 369BookThe Spirit of St. LouisLindbergh — C. Scribner's Sons — 1953
- 370BookThe Wartime Journals of Charles A. LindberghLindbergh — Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich — 1970
- 371BookCharles A. Lindbergh: Autobiography of ValuesLindbergh — Harcourt Brace Jovanovich — 1977
- 372Lindbergh: U.S. Air Mail Service PioneerLindbergh Foundation
- 373BookThose Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War IIOlson — Random House — 2013
- 374Pan Am's First Routes from BrownsvilleThe Pan Am Historical Foundation
- 375MagazineThe Frightening Lessons of Philip Roth's 'The Plot Against America'Brody, Richard — February 1, 2017
- 376MagazineThe World Over Which Charles Lindbergh FlewHampton, Dan — May 19, 2017
- 377MagazineAmerica First, for Charles Lindbergh and Donald TrumpThomas, Louisa — July 24, 2016
- 378BookThe Big Jump: Lindbergh and the Great Atlantic Air RaceBak, Richard — Wiley — 2011
- 379BookLindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That Divided AmericaDuffy, James P. — Regnery Publishing — 2010
- 380BookThe Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of FlightGroom, Winston — National Geographic — 2013
- 381BookAtlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the AtlanticJackson, Joe — Macmillan — 2012
- 382BookThe Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American AviationKessner, Thomas — Oxford University Press — 2010
- 383BookNorth To The OrientLindbergh, Anne Morrow — Mariner Books — 1966
- 384BookUnder A Wing: A MemoirLindbergh, Reeve — Delta — 1999
- 385BookLoss of Eden: A Biography of Charles and Anne Morrow LindberghMilton, Joyce — HarperCollins — 1993
- 386BookLindbergh: A BiographyMosley, Leonard — Doubleday — 1976
- 387BookThe American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of the Third ReichWallace, Max — Macmillan — 2005
- 388BookAnne Morrow Lindbergh: First Lady of the AirWinters, Kathleen — Macmillan — 2006