Charles Lindbergh

8 Pages 1982 Words

There have been many great adventurers and heroes in America’s past. One of them is Charles Lindbergh. He is most famous for his transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. He faced many hardships and successes, including his flight, marriage, and his child’s kidnapping.
All of his fascination with planes started when Lindbergh was just a youth. Charles was born on February 4, 1902, in the city of Detroit. At the age of eight is when he saw his first airplane, which was piloted by Lincoln Beachey. This is what started Lindbergh’s love for and interest for flight. Lindbergh then started to study World War I. He was fascinated with the flying exploits of French ace Rene Fonck, who had shot down 75 German planes in the war (WGHB, 1997). Lindbergh spent three years working on his father’s farm by the time he graduated from high school. He then enrolled as a mechanical engineering student at the University of Wisconsin. After an airplane landed on campus, Lindbergh had a great desire to fly. He quit college and became a student in Nebraska Aircraft Company, where he was taken aloft for his first flight in April, 1922. After learning the basics of aircraft construction, he went on a cross-country tour with a seasoned barnstormer and learned to wing-talk and make exhibition parachute jumps (NAHF, 1997).
Lindbergh then started to take flight. He won his first airplane and a second lieutenant’s commission in the Reserves in 1925. In the spring of 1926 he made the first airmail flight between Chicago and St. Louis. This route was very difficult and poorly marked. He was forced twice to parachute to safety from his disabled mail plane while flying the routes.
There was then an extraordinary offer to pilots of the world. A Frenchman, named Raymond Orteig, offered $25,000 to the first aviator to fly non-stop from Paris to New York or New York to Paris. Orteig’s offer was only good for five years, but within those f...