On May 21, 1927 at 10-22 in the evening, at the Le Bourget aerodrome in Paris, a huge crowd, tens of thousands of people cheered for the arrival of a small, wonderful airplane. It was called the Spirit of St. Louis and on board was a 25-year-old boy, Charles Lindbergh. He had left New York 33 and a half hours earlier and thus completed the first non-stop solo flight over the Atlantic two hours ahead of schedule.
The next day, newspapers around the world opened with the same news. “Lindbergh Lands in Paris” (Chicago Tribune); “Lucky Lindbergh Hops Off on Daring Flight to Paris” (Brooklyn Citizen); “Lindbergh Does It! To Paris in 33 ½ Hours; He flies 1000 Miles Through Snow and Sleet; Cheering French Carry Him Off Field ”(New York Times); and finally “The New York-Paris flight completed in 33 and a half hours” (Corriere della Sera).
Charles Lindbergh was born in Detroit in 1902, and grew up between Minnesota and Washington DC where his father was a Congressman. At 20 he had learned to fly, becoming a small phenomenon for his acrobatic virtues. He then joined the Air Force but at the time the United States did not need full-time pilots and then he dedicated himself to bringing the mail by air between St. Louis and Chicago until he decided to accept the challenge of a Frenchman who he ran a hotel in New York, Raymond Orteg, which, several years earlier, had given away $ 25,000 for the first person to arrive in Paris from New York without a stop.
A Ryan M-2 was modified for the enterprise so that the fuel tanks could be expanded. The aircraft was renamed the Spirit of St. Louis in honor of the venture’s financiers. Impressive video images of that flight remain: we see a shaky aircraft departing from Long Island and it seems impossible that it can fly for 33 hours; and then he, Charles Lindbergh, smiling with his mother before leaving; and finally welcomed as a hero in Paris and carried in triumph. A few days later “Lucky Lindy” was welcomed like a hero by a few million Americans at a parade on the streets of New York.