Today in history: May 21, 1927: “Est-il arrivé?”

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Charles Lindbergh landed The Spirit of St. Louis in Paris after the first nonstop transatlantic flight. It took him 33 1/2 hours. The main image I am left with from the stories of that flight is how, when he felt himself getting dozey, he would fly down close enough to the ocean so that the salt spray would splash his face and wake him up. Astonishing.

Fellow Minnesotan F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote:

In the late spring of 1927, something bright and alien flashed across the sky. A young Minnesotan who seemed to have nothing to do with his generation did a heroic thing, and for a moment people set down their glasses in country clubs and speakeasies and thought of their old best dreams.

A. Scott Berg, in his stupendous MUST-READ biography Lindbergh starts the book with the Paris landing:

For more than a day the world held its breath … and then the small plane was sighted over Ireland.

Twenty-seven hours after he had left Roosevelt Field in New York – alone, in the Spirit of St. Louis – word quickly spread from continent to continent that Charles A. Lindbergh had survived the most perilous leg of his journey – the fifteen-hour crossing of the Atlantic. He had to endure but a few more hours before reaching his destination, Paris. Anxiety yielded to anticipation.

The American Ambassador to France, Myron T. Herrick, went to St. Cloud after lunch that Saturday to watch the Franco-American team-tennis matches. When he took his seat in the front row, five thousand fans cheered. During the course of the afternoon, people in the stands heard newsboys shouting the headlines of their editions speciales, announcing Lindbergh’s expected arrival that night. In the middle of the match, Herrick received a telegram – confirmation that Lindbergh had passed over Valencia in Ireland. All eyes were on the Ambassador as he hastily left courtside, convincing most of the spectators that their prayers were being answered. Before the match had ended, the stands began to empty.

Herrick rushed back to his residence in Paris, ate a quick dinner at 5:30, then left for the airfield at Le Bourget, to the northeast of the city. “It was a good thing we did not delay another quarter of an hour,” Herrick recalled, “for crowds were already collecting along the road and in a short time passage was almost possible.”

The boulevards were jammed with cars ten abreast. Passengers poked their heads through the sliding roof panels of the Parisian taxis, greeting each other in jubilation. “Everyone had acquired a bottle of something and, inasmuch as the traffic moved very slowly,” one reveler recalled of that night in 1927, “bottles were passed from cab to cab celebrating the earthshaking achievement.” A mile from the airfield, the flow of traffic came to a standstill.

Once the radio announced that Lindbergh had flown over southern England, mobs formed in the heart of Paris. Thirty thousand people flocked toward the Place de l’Opéra, where illuminated advertising signs flashed news bulletins. Over the next few hours, the crowds spilled into the Boulevard Poissoniere – until it became unpassable – where they expected to find the most reliable accounts of Lindbergh’s progress posted in front of the Paris Matin offices. “Not since the armistice of 1918,” observed one reporter, “has Paris witnessed a downright demonstration of popular enthusiasm and excitement equal to that displayed by the throngs flocking to the boulevards for news of the American flier, whose personality has captured the hearts of the Parisian multitude.”

Between updates, people waited in anxious silence. Two French fliers – Nungesser and Coli – had not been heard from in the two weeks since their attempt to fly nonstop from Paris to New York; and their disappearance weighed heavily on the Parisians’ minds. Many muttered about the impossibility of accomplishing a nonstop transatlantic crossing, especially alone. Periodically, whispers rustled through the crowd, rumors that Lindbergh had been forced down. After a long silence, a Frenchwoman, dressed in mourning and sitting in a big limousine, wiped away tears of worry. Another woman, selling newspapers, approached her, fighting back her own tears. “You’re right to feel so, madame,” she said. “In such things there is no nationality – he’s some mother’s son.”

Close to nine o’clock, letters four feet tall flashed onto one of the advertising boards. “The crowds grew still, the waiters frozen in place between cafe tables,” one witness remembered. “All were watching. Traffic stopped. Then came the cheering message ‘Lindbergh sighted over Cherbourg and the coast of Normandy.’ ” The crowd burst into bravos. Strangers patted each other on the back and shook hands. Moments later, Paris Matin posted a bulletin in front of its building, confirming the sighting; and bystanders chanted “Vive Lindbergh!” and Vive l’Américain!” The next hour brought more good news from Deauville, and then Louviers. New arrivals onto the scene all asked the same question: “Est-il arrivé?”

Fifteen thousand others gravitated toward the Étoile, filling the city block that surrounded a hotel because they assumed Lindbergh would be spending the night there. Many too impatient to stand around in town suddenly decided to witness the arrival. Students from the Sorbonne jammed into buses and subways. Thousands more grabbed whatever conveyance remained available, until more than ten thousand cars filled the roads between the city and Le Bourget. Before long, 150,000 people had gathered at the airfield.

A little before ten o’clock, the excited crowd at Le Bourget heard an approaching engine and fell silent. A plane burst through the clouds and landed; but it turned out to be the London Express. Minutes later, as a cool wind blew the stars into view, another roar ripped the air, this time, a plane from Strasbourg. Red and gold and green rockets flared overhead, while acetylene searchlights scanned the dark sky. The crowd became restless, standing in the chill. Then, “suddenly unmistakeably the sound of an aeroplane … and then to our left a white flash against the black night … and another flash (like a shark darting through water),” recalled Harry Crosby – the American expatriate publisher – who was among the enthusiastic onlookers. “Then nothing. No sound. Suspense. And again a sound, this time somewhere off towards the right. And is it some belated plane or is it Lindbergh? Then sharp swift in the gold glare of the searchlights a small white hawk of a plane swoops hawk-like down and across the field – C’est lui Lindbergh. LINDBERGH!”

On May 21, 1927, at 10:24 p.m., the Spirit of St. Louis landed – having flown 3,614 miles from New York, nonstop, in thirty-three hours, thirty minutes, and thirty seconds.

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There is a lot to be said for being “first”. There may have been better pilots. There may have been better mechanics, although that is debatable. But Lindbergh was the “first”.

Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State under President Warren Harding, responded to Lindbergh’s flight thus:

We measure heroes as we do ships, by their displacement. Colonel Lindbergh has displaced everything.

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8 Responses to Today in history: May 21, 1927: “Est-il arrivé?”

  1. Emily says:

    Not to trivialize his accomplishments, but that is one dashing photo.

  2. red says:

    Such a handsome man. He was little more than a boy there, really!

  3. mitch says:

    My dad has an old family photo of a great-uncle (son of the woman my great-grandfather was married to before she died, after which he married my grandfather’s moter – whew, that’s confusing) standing in a machine shop he owned in Long Prairie, MN, with a very young Charles Lindbergh.

    It can seem like a small world out here.

    (Provided, I suppose, that you don’t start talking family trees…)

  4. The movie Billy Wilder wanted to make

    In line with what happened Today In History, here’s something else. I love this story. Billy Wilder (who directed The Spirit of St. Louis, not my favorite) and Charles Lindbergh were good friends despite many political, social differences -…

  5. red says:

    Mitch – wow! Very cool about the photo!

  6. dlyn says:

    Came to check you out because of the mention on PW’s site. I was instantly captivated and will definitely be back.

  7. Cara Ellison says:

    I have little pinprick tears in my eyes. That is a truly moving passage about an act that these days is so routine it doesn’t even register that it was ever impossible or new. This post is a nice wake up call for an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.

  8. JFH says:

    “Many muttered about the impossibility of accomplishing a nonstop transatlantic crossing, especially alone.”

    This a strange sentence as the first non-stop transatlantic crossing had already been accomplished 10 years earlier. It is the SOLO part that made this impressive feat because there was no co-pilot to sharing the duties or flying and navigation and, obviously, to allow the pilot to rest.

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