Writing the Heavenly Frontier [antikvár]

Introduction: Writing the Heavenly FrontierJust after sunrise on a drizzly morning in May 1927, a small group of onlookers gathered at Roosevelt Field in New York to watch the Spirit of St Louis take off. The wheels of the small airplane bulged against the earth, soft with rain from recent storms. At its controls Charles A. Lindbergh, known to the public as "slim", "lucky", "the flying fool", and "lanky demon of the air",1 took one last look at the wind, checked his instruments, and throttled up. Awkward and unwieldy, the airplane struggled forward as friends urged it on, straining at its struts, willing its fabric wings to lift 5,000 pounds of airframe, power plant, pilot and fuel. The dark horse of the race between New York and Paris, Lindbergh eased the airplane off the ground in stages. The Spirit of St Louis sank back to earth three times before it finally rose from the muddy strip, narrowly missing power lines at the end of the runway and wallowing into an overcast sky. Watching the aircraft disappear into the distance, Richard E. Byrd, who had been favored to win the race, gave the man three to one odds at making it to Paris alive.Prior to Lindbergh's takeoff, four Americans had lost their lives testing aircraft for the race, and Commander Byrd's team had suffered serious injuries when the nose-heavy America flipped over on landing during its first test flight. French pilots Nungesser and Coli had vanished over the Atlantic two weeks before and were presumed dead. No one doubted the riskiness of the venture: one man, one engine and a route that spanned 3,600 miles, most of it over open sea. Without a navigator or radio, Lindbergh severed all contact with the outside world. When he was spotted off the coast of Ireland twenty-eight hours later, he had spent the long night and most of the next day fighting fatigue. Unaware that word had spread of his approach,1Sources for Lindbergh's nicknames include "'Lucky' Lindbergh Man of Nicknames", The New York Times, 21 May 1927. "Lanky demon of the air" is recorded in Lindbergh's Spirit of St Louis (New York: Scribner's, 1953), 166.2"Other Fliers Wish Lindbergh All Luck", The New York Times, 21 May 1927,4.