Charles Augustus Lindbergh
was born in Detroit on 4th February, 1902. He worked for his father's
farm before entering the University of Wisconsin. He did not stay
long and left his studies to work for the Nebraska Aircraft Company.
In 1923 Lindbergh joined
the United States Air Service and by 1925 was a second lieutenant
in the Reserves. The following year he began work as an airmail
pilot between St Louis and Chicago. Lindbergh also began to think
about the $25,000 prize offered by Raymond Orteig to the first person
to fly nonstop between New York and Paris.
Lindbergh left Curtiss
Field on the morning of 20th May 1927. Flying a Ryan monoplane named
Spirit of St Louis, he took 33 hours for the 3,600 mile journey
between the United States and France.
When Lindbergh arrived
back in the United States President Calvin Coolidge awarded him
the Distinguished Flying Cross. Over 4 million people lined the
parade route in New York and the mayor, Jimmy Walker, pined the
city's Medal of Valor upon him.
Over the next few months
Lindbergh helped promote aviation through the Guggenheim Foundation
Fund. This involved visiting 92 cities and making 147 speeches.
On 1st March 1932 Lindbergh's
baby son was kidnapped from his home in Hopewell, New Jersey. He
was later found dead and Bruno Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter,
was executed for the crime on 3rd April, 1936.
In September 1940, Lindbergh
helped Burton K. Wheeler and Norman Thomas to form the America First
Committee (AFC). I t soon became the most powerful isolationist
group in the United States. The AFC had four main principles: (1)
The United States must build an impregnable defense for America;
(2) No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack
a prepared America; (3) American democracy can be preserved only
by keeping out of the European War; (4) "Aid short of war"
weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America
in war abroad.
The AFC influenced public
opinion through publications and speeches and within a year had
over 800,000 members. The organization was dissolved four days after
the Japanese Air Force attacked Pearl Harbor on 7th December, 1941.
During the Second World
War Lindbergh served with the United States Air Force in the Pacific
as a technical adviser. He also flew several combat missions against
the Japanese Air Force.
Lindbergh won the Pulitzer
Prize for his book The Spirit of St. Louis
(1953). In 1954 Lindbergh was appointed a Brigadier General in the
Air Force Reserves. Charles Augustus Lindbergh died at Maui, Hawaii,
on 26th August, 1974.
