Background
He was born in Detroit, Mich. , on Feb. 4, 1902, the son of Charles A. Lindbergh, a member of the U. S. House of Representatives from Minnesota from 1907 to 1917.
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Charles Augustus Lindberg
Edit ProfileEducation
After attending schools in Little Falls, Minnesota, and Washington, D. C. , Lindbergh enrolled in a mechanical engineering program at the University of Wisconsin. Lindbergh became bored with studying; he was more interested in cars and motorcycles at this point.
He enrolled in the U. S. Air Service Reserve as a cadet in 1924 and graduated the next year.
Career
Lindbergh wanted to compete for the $25 thousand prize that a man named Raymond Orteig had posted for the first person to make a nonstop flight between New York and Paris, France.
With money put up by several St. Louis businessmen, Lindberghhad a plane called the Spirit of St. Louis built.
On the first lap of his flight to New York, he traveled nonstop to St. Louis in fourteen hours and twenty-five minutes—record-breaking time from the West Coast. On May 20, 1927, Lindbergh took off in his silver-winged monoplane (a plane with only one supporting surface) from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, bound for an airport outside Paris.
Better-equipped and better-known aviators had failed; some had even crashed to their death.
But Lindbergh succeeded.
He arrived on May 21, having traveled 2, 610 miles in thirty-three and one-half hours.
He immediately became a hero and received many honors and decorations, including the Congressional Medal of Honor, the French Chevalier Legion of Honor, the Royal Air Cross (British), and the Order of Leopold (Belgium).
During a tour of seventy-five American cities sponsored by the Daniel Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aeronautics, he was greeted by wild demonstrations of praise. In December 1927 Lindbergh flew nonstop between Washington and Mexico City, Mexico, and went on a goodwill trip to the Caribbean and Central America.
The Lindberghs made many flights together.
Two years later, in a 30, 000-mile flight, they explored possible air routes across oceans.
In the late 19306 Lindbergh conducted various studies of air power in Europe.
Also in the 19306 Lindbergh was on the Board of Directors of Pan-American World Airways.
He was criticized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) for radio broadcasts urging America not to fight in "other people's wars. "
As a result, Lindbergh resigned his commission in the U. S. Air Force.
Lindbergh's association with the Nazis had severely damaged his reputation, but the popularity of the books he and his wife wrote helped restore some of what he had lost.
Lindbergh wrote several accounts of his famous 1927 flight.
With Carrel he coauthored Culture of Organs (1938), and in 1948 he wrote Of Flight and Life. Lindbergh's later works included The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (1970) and Boyhood on the Upper Mississippi: A Reminiscent Letter (1972).
An Autobiography of Values (1977) was published after his death.
After her husband's death, Anne Morrow Lindbergh continued to publish books of her diaries and letters.
She retired to Darien, Connecticut, where a series of strokes weakened her.
The state of Connecticut joined with the Lindbergh children in pressing charges against the woman.
Politics
He toured German aviation centers at the invitation of Nazi (a political party that controlled Germany from 1933–45 and that attempted to rid the country of Jewish people) leader Hermann Göring (1893–1946), becoming convinced that the Nazi military was unbeatable.
Connections
In 1933, accompanied by his wife, he made a tour of five continents to survey transoceanic air routes. The kidnapping and murder of their son in 1932, together with a strong antipathy to the American press, caused the Lindberghs to move to England, where they lived from 1935 to 1938, and then to the island of Iliec, near Port Blanc, France.
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Born
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Died
August 26, 1974 (aged 72) -
Nationality
American -
Political Party
Pacific