New York to Paris, alone

Charles Lindbergh · 1927 CE · Earth

New York to Paris, alone — Charles Lindbergh · 1927 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Fly non-stop from New York to Paris alone and win the Orteig Prize.

Historical context

On 22 May 1919 the New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered 25,000 dollars to the first aviator to fly without a stop between New York and Paris, in either direction. The Atlantic itself had been flown non-stop a few weeks later, on 14 and 15 June 1919, when John Alcock and Arthur Brown took a twin-engined Vickers Vimy from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to a bog near Clifden in Ireland in less than sixteen hours; but Newfoundland to Ireland was not New York to Paris. By May 1927 six men had died trying for the prize: Charles Clavier and Jacob Islamoff when René Fonck’s three-engined Sikorsky crashed and burned at Roosevelt Field in September 1926; Noel Davis and Stanton Wooster when their three-engined American Legion crashed on a test flight on 26 April 1927; and the French aces Charles Nungesser and François Coli, who left Le Bourget in the single-engined biplane L’Oiseau Blanc on 8 May 1927 and were never seen again. Twelve days later Lindbergh, an airmail pilot backed by a group of St. Louis businessmen, set out alone in a single-engined Ryan monoplane with no radio.

The voyage, step by step

  1. A muddy, overloaded take-off

    20 May 1927

    At 7:52 in the morning of 20 May 1927, New York daylight time, the Spirit of St. Louis, carrying some five thousand pounds, a thousand more than its wings had ever lifted, gathers speed slowly down the rain-softened runway at Roosevelt Field and barely clears the telephone wires at the far end.

  2. Checking the great circle

    20 May 1927

    A little over four hours out, at eight minutes past noon by the New York clock, Lindbergh strikes the coast of Nova Scotia at the mouth of St. Mary’s Bay, near Meteghan, about six miles southeast of the great-circle line he had drawn on his chart: his first proof that dead reckoning alone would work.

  3. The last land for sixteen hours

    1927 CE

    At dusk, about 7:15 in the evening by the New York clock, Lindbergh dives low over the harbour of St. John’s, Newfoundland, and out through the harbour’s narrow mouth: his last sight of land before some 3,000 kilometres of open ocean.

  4. Fog, ice and sleep

    1927 CE

    Deep over the Atlantic, Lindbergh climbs above storm clouds in the dark, turns back into clear air when sleet begins to collect on the plane, flies blind through fog after dawn, and fights off sleep and the hallucinations brought on by exhaustion that he later described as phantoms.

  5. Ireland, dead ahead

    21 May 1927

    Twenty-seven hours out of New York and sixteen hours after Newfoundland, Lindbergh passes a scattering of fishing boats and, less than an hour later, sights a rugged coast: Valentia and Dingle Bay, on the southwest coast of Ireland, almost exactly where his dead-reckoning course predicted landfall.

  6. Across the Channel by dusk

    21 May 1927

    Lindbergh crosses the tip of Cornwall, passes a little south of Plymouth, and flies from Start Point across the English Channel to Cape de la Hague, reaching Cherbourg as the sun touches the horizon.

  7. Le Bourget, a hundred thousand strong

    21 May 1927

    At 10:22 p.m. by the Paris clock on 21 May, 5:22 in the afternoon in New York, the Spirit of St. Louis lands at Le Bourget after 33 hours 30 minutes in the air, and a crowd breaks through the fences before the propeller has stopped.

Outcome

Landed at Le Bourget at 10:22 p.m. Paris time on 21 May 1927, 33 hours 30 minutes and some 5,800 km (3,610 miles) after leaving Roosevelt Field, the first man to fly alone and without a stop between New York and Paris; a crowd the National Air and Space Museum puts at 100,000 overran the field. The Orteig Prize was awarded to him in New York on 16 June 1927.

Charles Lindbergh

American airmail pilot who made the first solo non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927, alone in a single-engined monoplane.

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