Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh is an American pioneer of the Aviation, born with Detroit the February 4th 1902 and died in Hawaii the August 26th 1974.
Its youth
Wire of immigrants Swedish, Lindbergh grew in the Minnesota. His/her father was lawyer and member of the American Congress, opposed to the entry in war of the United States in 1917; his/her mother taught chemistry. Impassioned aviation, it gave up in 1922 its studies of mechanical engineering, passed the pilot's license and bought a small plane which it repaired to propose of the first flights.
The crossing of the Atlantic
After being itself involved with the American military pilots, he worked as pilot of air-mail in the Années 1920. He acquired an international repute while becoming the first pilot to connect New York to Paris, during a flight the 20 and May 21st 1927, in thirty-three hours and thirty minutes, on board sound Avion - the Spirit off Saint Louis - especially conceived for the occasion in hardly two months. The stake of this crossing of the Atlantic Ocean northern connecting bets to New York in the plane was the Prix Orteig of an amount of 25.000$.
However, contrary to the overall spread idea, if Lindbergh is well the first to cross the Atlantic as a recluse and to connect New York to Paris, is not the first to carry out such a crossing. Since 1919, another attempt was crowned success. This first crossing of the Atlantic in the plane without stopover is much less known: it took place between Newfoundland and the Ireland of the 14 to the June 15th 1919 by the Capt. John Alcock and Lieut. A.W. Brown, both English. They started from St John' S, Newfoundland (currently in Canada) and were posed in Clifden in Ireland after a flight of 3 630 km, in sixteen hours and twelve minutes. Their plane was a bomber of the First World War, Vickers Vimy. This crossing did not profit from formidable “the media plan” of Lindbergh. Moreover, it did not connect two emblematic cities like Paris and New York, which explains certainly why it was quickly supplanted in the spirits by that of Lindbergh, whose exploit is quite real but whose image of pioneer thus is partly usurped.
The success of Lindbergh took seat twelve days after the disappearance of Charles Nungesser and François Coli which had tried the crossing of is in west, and two weeks before the second crossing without stopover of the Atlantic, between New York and Berlin, carried out by Clarence Chamberlain and Charles Lévine.
The solitary eagle, Charles Lindbergh, were immediately adulated by crowd and this as of her arrival in Paris. It made strong impression when it asked the French president of the time to meet the mother of the young missing pilot, Nungesser, to which it wished to present its condolences. Thus, European crowd fell under the charm from the young man. With each one of its stopovers, during its stay in Europe, it was awaited by many people who hoped to approach it. Its stay was short; it was satisfied to go to Brussels and London before setting out again in the United States on board an American cruiser on which Spirit off Saint-Louis was embarked in spare parts.
In the newspaper Humanity, Paul Valiant-Dressmaker written: “From the million and the million men today on the two sides of the ocean will feel closer from/to each other, more fraternal… And that, it is a revolutionary victory. ”
Its statute was such as after its crossing, it became an important interlocutor for all the Naval Aviation questions until its death. He officiated in many national committees and international, of which the central committee of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics with the the United States. The March 21st 1929, it was seen decorated with the medal of honor of the Congress.
The famous man
Kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby
Married in 1929 with wealthy heiress, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Lindbergh had six children. The elder one was kidnapped on March 1st 1932 dead and was found the May 12th in spite of the payment of a ransom.
Bruno Hauptmann was condemned for the removal and the murder of the Lindbergh son following a very mediatized lawsuit, qualified “lawsuit of the century”. It was carried out on April 3rd, 1936. Bruno Hauptmann always protested its innocence and its culpability is the subject today always of controversies. Curiously, more than two hundred people confessed the removal of the Lindbergh baby. The fame of the aviator undoubtedly pushed these people to do it. Opinion even of its entourage, Lindbergh was not any more the same man from the murder, despairing of humanity.
Salvador Dali hardly arranged the things while occurring in one evening dressed up with Gala in a ensanglanté linen which was supposed to disguise it as “assassinated Lindbergh Baby”. The assistance took it very badly and Dali had bredouiller some excuses confused.
Lindbergh, Nazis and anti-semitism
Tired to be under the projectors and always in mourning, Lindbergh were exiled in Europe in December 1935, close to London. Sent in Germany at the request of the American embassy to carry out a report/ratio on the Luftwaffe, it falls in admiration in front of the German effectiveness and was decorated by Hermann Göring in 1938 which showed him out of early product the new planes. Of return to the United States, it made profit the air force from its remarks. Partisan of American neutrality at the beginning of the war (it became, of 1940 to 1941, one of principal the spokesperson of the isolationist movement America First), engagement which will be worth to him to be suspecté of anti-semitism, it resigned of the reserve. He was however to change opinion after the attack of Pearl Harbor and he ensured about fifty air missions in the Pacific like civilian.
In October 1940, Lindbergh recommends that America “recognizes the new powers in Europe”.
In May 1941, Roosevelt requires of him to return the medal of the received shame of the hands of Hermann Göring, which he refuses to do preferring to give his resignation of his post of colonel to the Minister for the War.
September 11th, 1941, with Monks, at the time of a meeting of America First, it poses celebrates it question in a broadcast speech: “Which is the agitators warmongers? ”, what he answers: “The Jewish race. ” In the assistance, it is ovation…
Pulitzer price
After the Second world war, become consulting for the airline company Side Am, he told his famous crossing in a book, The Spirit off St.Louis , which was worth the Prix Pulitzer to him. Rehabilitated, reinstated in the American army in the rank of brigadier general, it devoted its time to the defense of nature, condemning supersonic transport in particular.
The fold
Of 1957 until its death in 1974, Lindbergh had a relation with a named German hatter Brigitte Hesshaimer, 24 years its junior. They had three children together: Dyrk (born in 1958), Astrid and David (born in 1967). The two lovers maintained their relation in a total confidentiality; even the children did not know the true identity of their father, whom they sporadically met at the time of his visits. Astrid lute later an article of magazine on Lindbergh and found stereotypes like more than one hundred of letters of her hand for her mother. She made the public affair in 2003, two years after the death of Brigitte Hesshaimer.
It was dependant of friendship with the artist Joseph Savina who maintained his residence with Tréguier. Lindbergh spent the last years of its life on the island hawaïenne of Maui, where he died of a cancer of the spinal-cord the August 26th 1974. Its body was incinerated, then its ashes dispersed around the church of Palapala Ho' omau.
Anecdotes on its exploit
Lindbergh tells in its memories that it had to fight against the sleep. On several occasions, it awoke when the landing gear touched the waves. The plane had been deliberately designed on an unstable airfoil, so that its movements awake the pilot if he fell asleep.
It had embarked, in all and for all, 2.000 liters of gasoline, 2 sandwiches and 2 bars of chocolate.
Its plane was equipped with a reserve of 1440 liters, located just behind the engine. It did not have a windshield before transparency, but a Périscope to see beyond.
With the crowd which accommodated it at the time of her landing to the Le Bourget, it was satisfied to answer: “Well, I did it! ” (“Here, I did it! ”). During this time, the collectors of memories tore pieces of airplane cloth…
At the conclusion of its crossing, Lindbergh wrote a letter with the owner of Longines, describing to him in detail a model of wrist watch for pilot, who would help with navigation. The watch was actually produced, and of the counterparts are still produced to date.
Lindbergh and fiction
National hero, then figure discussed because of its standpoint, Lindbergh inspired by many works of fiction.First of all, in 1928, a radiophonic part of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, the Flight of Lindbergh , was drawn from its book.
Literature
One as of his/her comrades of university, Stanley G. Weinbaum, now recognized like one of the major authors of the golden age of the American Science fiction, wrote a autobiographical Esquisse of Stanley G. Weinbaum in which it specifies that it knew Lindbergh at the university of Wisconsin, that neither one nor the other obtained its diploma there, but that after its exploit, Lindbergh “was recalled” by the university to see itself there allotting a diploma Honoris causa , which was not the case for Weinbaum. In 1934, Weinbaum wrote a “novella” (Romance court), the Paddle of the flame which was later increased by another news and was published under the title the black Flame . This history describes the post-apocalyptic company, two hundred years after the all-out wars of the end of the 20th century, and the author referred there malicieusement to Lindbergh: an old man wonders whether the Old ones (those of before the apocalypse) could fly, and ends up showing that Lindbergh (or “Lindbird”) undoubtedly never existed.Lindbergh is one of the principal characters of the novel of history-fiction of Philip Roth, the Plot against America (2004). In this account, Roth imagines Lindbergh gaining the presidential election against Roosevelt in 1940, at the end of a tinted and centered anti-semitism campaign mainly over the refusal to see America taking share with the conflict which devastates Europe. Hardly arrived at the capacity, Lindbergh hastens to sign a treaty of friendship with the Nazi Germany, receives von Ribbentrop with the White House and launches a programme of assimilation of the American Jews.
Another novel of history-fiction, Fatherland of Robert Harris, published in 1992, Lindbergh watch as an ambassador of the the United States in the Nazi Germany of 1964.
The intrigue of the novel of Agatha Christie the Crime of the East-Express train , also carried with the screen, is based on the removal of the baby of Lindbergh.
Cinema
- James Stewart held the main role in the biography of Lindbergh The Spirit off St Louis of Billy Wilder. The film was partly made on the Aérodrome of Guyancourt.
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Orson Welles paid a homage to the character in 1984 and The Spirit off Charles Lindbergh entitled it.
Song
- Woody Guthrie wrote and interpreted the song Lindbergh in which he criticizes the positions non-interventionists and pro-Nazis of Lindbergh.
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Lindbergh (sic) is the title of a song written by Claude Péloquin, composed and interpreted by Robert Charlebois, in 1968. Words Psychédélique S and humorous on the topic of the air voyage.
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more recently, the group British Sea Power created in 2002 a song in the honor of Lindbergh entitled Spirit off St Louis .
Theater
The part of Garth Wingfield Flight, the Rise and Fall off Charles Lindbergh , created with New York in 2005 is “the déconstruction of an American icon and the exploration of the effects of the media and public notoriety on our celebrities”.
Simple: Charles Lindbergh