I
Boyhood and Early Flights
I was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4, 1902. My father was practicing law in Little Falls, Minnesota, at the time. When I was less than two months old my parents took me to their farm, on the western banks of the Mississippi River two miles south of Little Falls.
My father, Charles A. Lindbergh, was born in Stockholm, Sweden, January 20, 1860, the son of Ola and Louisa Manson. His father (who changed his name to Lindbergh after reaching America) was a member of the Swedish Parliament and had at one time been Secretary to the King.
About 1860 my grandfather with his family embarked on a ship bound for America, and settled near Sauk Center, Minnesota, where he took up a homestead and built his first home in America—a log cabin. It was here that my father spent his early life.
The Rev. C. S. Harrison, writing for the Minnesota Historical Society, gives an account of the activities of my grandfather during the early days in Minnesota.
There were very few schools in Minnesota at that time, and my father’s boyhood days were spent mostly in hunting and fishing. His education consisted largely of home study with an occasional short term at country schools.
He was educated at Grove Lake Academy, Minnesota, and graduated from the law school at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with an LL.B. degree.
He began his law practice in Little Falls where he served as County Attorney. He later became interested in politics, and was elected to the 60th Congress in 1906 to represent the Sixth District of Minnesota at Washington, a capacity in which he served for ten years.
Father and son
Madison, WI—Instructor and classmates in a mid-western military school
My mother was born in Detroit, Michigan, daughter of Charles and Evangeline Land. She is of English, Irish and French extraction. As a graduate of the University of Michigan, she holds a B.S. degree from that institution, also an A.M. degree from Columbia University, New York City. Her father, Dr. Charles H. Land, a Detroit dentist, was born in Simcoe, Norfolk County, Canada, and his father, Colonel John Scott Land, came from England, and was one of the founders of the present city of Hamilton.
My grandfather was constantly experimenting in his laboratory. He held a number of patents on incandescent grates and furnaces, in addition to several on gold and enamel inlays and other dental processes. He was one of the first to foresee the possibilities of porcelain in dentistry, and later became known as “the father of porcelain dental art.”
During the first four years of my life, I lived in our Minnesota home with the exception of a few trips to Detroit. Then my father was elected to Congress and thereafter I seldom spent more than a few months in the same place. Our winters were passed in Washington, and our summers in Minnesota, with intermediate visits to Detroit.
When I was eight years of age I entered the Force School in Washington. My schooling was very irregular due to our constant moving from place to place. Up to the time I entered the University of Wisconsin I had never attended for one full school year, and I had received instruction from over a dozen institutions, both public and private, from Washington to California.
Through these years I crossed and recrossed the United States, made one trip to Panama, and had thoroughly developed a desire for travel, which has never been overcome.
My chief interest in school lay along mechanical and scientific lines. Consequently, after graduating from the Little Falls High School, I decided to take a course in Mechanical Engineering, and two years later entered the College of Engineering of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
While I was attending the University I became intensely interested in aviation. Since I saw my first airplane near Washington DC, in 1912, I had been fascinated with flying, although up to the time I enrolled in a flying school in 1922 I had never been near enough a plane to touch it.
The long hours of study at college were very trying for me. I had spent most of my life outdoors and had never before found it necessary to spend more than a part of my time in study.
At Wisconsin my chief recreation consisted of shooting-matches with the rifle and pistol teams of rival Universities, and in running around on my motorcycle which I had ridden down from Minnesota when I entered the University.
I had been raised with a gun on our Minnesota home, and found a place on the R.O.T.C. teams at the beginning of my freshman year at Wisconsin. From then on I spent every minute I could steal from my studies in the shooting gallery and on the range.
The first six weeks of vacation after my freshman year were spent in an Artillery School at Camp Knox, Kentucky. When that was over I headed my motorcycle south and with forty-eight dollars in my pocket, set out for Florida. After arriving at Jacksonville I started back the same day, but over a different route leading farther west than the first. Seventeen days after leaving Camp Knox I arrived back in Madison with a motorcycle badly in need of repair and nine dollars left in my pocket. After stopping in Madison long enough to overhaul the engine I went to Little Falls to spend the remainder of my vacation.
Soon after the start of my third semester at Wisconsin I decided to study aeronautics in earnest, and if, after becoming better acquainted with the subject, and it appeared to have a good future, I intended to take it up as a life work.
I remained at the University of Wisconsin long enough to finish the first half of my sophomore year. Then about the end of March, 1922, I left Madison on my motorcycle en route to Lincoln, Nebraska, where I had enrolled as a flying student with the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation.
The roads in Wisconsin in March, 1922, were not all surfaced and when, after leaving the well-paved highway, I had progressed only about four miles in as many hours, I put my motorcycle on the first farm wagon that passed and shipped it to Lincoln by rail at the next town.
I arrived at Lincoln on the first of April. On April 9, 1922, I had my first flight as a passenger in a Lincoln Standard with Otto Timm, piloting.
I received my first instruction in the same plane a few days later under I. O. Biffle, who was known at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation as the most “hard boiled” instructor the army ever had during the war.
The next two months were spent in obtaining, in one way or another, my flying instruction, and in learning what I could around the factory, as there was no ground school in connection with the flying course at that time.
We did most of our flying in the early morning or late evening on account of the strong Nebraska winds in midday with their corresponding rough air which makes flying so difficult for a student.
I believe that I got more than my share of rough weather flying, however, because my instructor, or “Biff” as we used to call him, had certain very definite views on life, one of which was that early morning was not made as a time for instructors to arise. So as I was the only student and Biff my only instructor, I did very little early morning flying.
By the end of May I had received about eight hours of instruction which (in addition to the $500 cost of my flying course) had required about $150 for train fare and personal expenses.
One morning Biff announced that I was ready to solo, but the president of the company required a bond to cover possible breakage of the plane, which I was not able to furnish. As a result I did not take a plane up by myself until several months later.
Before I had entirely completed my flying course, the instruction plane was sold to E. G. Bahl, who was planning a barnstorming trip through southeastern Nebraska. I became acquainted with Bahl at Lincoln and offered to pay my own expenses if allowed to accompany him as mechanic and helper. As a result we barnstormed most of the Nebraska towns southeast of Lincoln together, and it is to him that I owe my first practical experience in cross country flying.
“Barnstorming” is the aviator’s term for flying about from one town to another and taking anyone who is sufficiently “airminded” for a short flight over the country. In 1922 the fare usually charged was five dollars for a ride of from five to ten minutes.
It was while I was flying with Bahl that I began to do a little “wing-walking.” We would often attract a crowd to the pasture or stubble field from which we were operating, by flying low over town while I was standing on one of the wing tips.
In June I returned to Lincoln and received a little more instruction, making a total of about eight hours.
About this time Charlie Harden, well known in the aeronautical world for his parachute work, arrived in Lincoln. I had been fascinated by the parachute jumps I had seen, and persuaded Ray Page to let me make a double drop with Harden’s chutes.
A double drop is made by fastening two parachutes together with rope. Both are then packed in a heavy canvas bag; the mouth of the bag is laced together and the lace ends tied in a bow knot. The bag is lashed halfway out on the wing of the plane, with the laced end hanging down. When the plane has reached sufficient altitude the jumper climbs out of the cockpit and along the wing to the chute, fastens the parachute straps to his harness, and swings down under the wing. In this position he is held to the plane by the bow knot holding together the mouth of the bag containing his parachute, the bag itself being tied securely to the wing. When ready to cut loose he pulls the bow knot allowing the bag to open and the parachute to be pulled out by his weight.
In a double jump, after the first parachute has fully opened, the jumper cuts the rope binding the second chute to the first. The first chute upon being relieved of his weight, collapses, and passes him on the way down.
I made my first jump one evening in June from an 1,800-foot altitude over the flying field.
My first chute opened quickly, and after floating down for a few seconds I cut it loose from the second, expecting a similar performance. But I did not feel the comfortable tug of the risers which usually follows an exhibition jump. As I had never made a descent before, it did not occur to me that everything was not as it should be, until several seconds had passed and I began to turn over and fall head first. I looked around at the chute just in time to see it string out; then the harness jerked me into an upright position and the chute was open. Afterwards I learned that the vent of the second chute had been tied to the first with grocery string which had broken in packing the parachute, and that instead of stringing out when I cut loose, it had followed me still folded, causing a drop of several hundred feet before opening.
I remained in Lincoln for two weeks working in the Lincoln Standard factory for fifteen dollars a week. Then I received a wire from H. J. Lynch, who had purchased a Standard a few weeks before and taken it on a barnstorming trip into western Kansas. He was in need of a parachute jumper to fill a number of exhibition contracts in Kansas and Colorado, and wanted me to go with him in that capacity at a small fraction of its cost. Page offered me a new Harden Chute instead of my remaining flying instruction, and I took a train for Bird City, Kansas.
Lynch and myself barnstormed over western Kansas and eastern Colorado giving a number of exhibitions from time to time, in which I usually made a jump and did a little wing-walking.
In the fall, together with “Banty” Rogers, a wheat rancher who owned the plane, we set out for Montana. Our course took us through a corner of Nebraska and then up through Wyoming along the Big Horn Mountains and over Custer’s Battle Field. At one time in Wyoming we were forced to land, due to motor trouble, near a herd of buffalo, and while Lynch was working on the motor I started over towards the animals to get a picture. I had not considered that they might object to being photographed, and was within a hundred yards of them when an old bull looked up and stamped his foot. In a moment they were all in line facing me with lowered heads. I snapped a picture but lost no time in returning to the plane. Meanwhile Lynch had located our trouble and we took off.
Shipping the Spirit of St. Louis
The men who made the plane. Left to right: William H. Bowlus, Factory Manager, Ryan Airlines; B. Franklin Mahoney, President, Ryan Airlines; Charles A. Lindbergh; Donald A. Hall, Chief Engineer and Designer; A. J. Edwards, Sales Manager
After we had been in Billings, Montana, about a week, Lynch traded ships with a pilot named Reese, who was flying a Standard belonging to Lloyd Lamb of Billings. Lynch and I stayed in Montana while Reese returned to Kansas with Rogers.
We barnstormed Montana and northern Wyoming until mid-October including exhibitions at the Billings and Lewistown fairs.
At the Lewistown fair we obtained a field adjoining the fairgrounds and did a rushing business for three days. We had arranged for the fence to be opened to the grounds and for a gateman to give return tickets to anyone who wished to ride in the plane. All this in return for a free parachute drop.
At Billings, however, our field was some distance from the fair and we decided to devise some scheme to bring the crowd out to us. We stuffed a dummy with straw and enough mud to give it sufficient falling speed to look like a human being.
When the grandstands were packed that afternoon we took off from our field with the dummy in the front cockpit with me. I went out on the wing and we did a few stunts over the fairgrounds to get everyone’s attention, then Lynch turned the plane so that no one could see me on the wing and we threw out the dummy. It fell waving its arms and legs around wildly and landed near the Yellowstone River.
We returned to our field and waited expectantly for the curious ones to come rushing out for information, but two hours later, when a few Montanans did arrive, they told us about one of the other attractions—a fellow who dived from an airplane into the Yellowstone River which was about three feet deep at that point. That was the last time we attempted to thrill a Montana crowd.
The barnstorming season in Montana was about over in October and soon after returning from Lewistown I purchased a small boat for two dollars. After patching it up a bit and stopping the larger leaks, I started alone down the Yellowstone River on the way to Lincoln.
The river was not deep and ran over numerous rapids which were so shallow that even the flat bottom of my small boat would bump over the rocks from time to time. I had been unable to purchase a thoroughly seagoing vessel for two dollars, and very little rough going was required to knock out the resin from the cracks and open the old leaks again.
I had my camping equipment lashed on top of one of the seats to keep it dry, and as I progressed downstream through the ever-present rapids, more and more of my time was required for bailing out the boat with an old tin can, until at the end of the first day, when I had travelled about twenty miles, I was spending fully half of my time bailing out water.
I made camp that night in a small clearing beside the river. There had been numerous showers during the day, which thoroughly soaked the ground, and towards evening a steady drizzling rain set in.
I pitched my army pup tent on the driest ground I could find and, after a cold supper, crawled in between the three blankets which I had sewn together to form a bag.
The next morning the sky was still overcast but the rain had stopped, and after a quick breakfast I packed my equipment in the boat and again started down the river.
The rain set in anew, and this together with the water from the ever-increasing leaks in the sides and bottom of the boat required such constant bailing that I found little use for the oars that day. By evening the rocks had taken so much effect that the boat was practically beyond repair.
After a careful inspection, which ended in the conclusion that further progress was not feasible, I traded what was left of the boat to the son of a nearby rancher in return for a wagon ride to the nearest town, Huntley, Montana. I expressed my equipment and bought a railroad ticket to Lincoln, where I had left my motorcycle.
A short time before I had left Lincoln, while I was racing with a car along one of the Nebraska country roads, a piston had jammed and I had not found time to replace it. Accordingly, after returning from Montana, I spent several days overhauling the machine before proceeding on to Detroit where I was to meet my mother.
I made the trip to Detroit in three days and after spending about two weeks there I took a train for Little Falls to clear up some business in connection with our farm.
During the winter months I spent part of my time on the farm and part in Minneapolis with my father. Occasionally we would drive the hundred miles from Minneapolis to Little Falls together.
In March, 1923, I left Minnesota and after a short visit in Detroit, departed on a train bound for Florida. My next few weeks were spent in Miami and the Everglades.