EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif -- Charles A. Lindbergh, en route from Los Angeles after his renowned solo transatlantic flight, landed the Spirit of St. Louis on the dry lakebed near Muroc for an impromptu inspection.
Charles Lindbergh is known as the first aviator to complete a solo transatlantic flight, which he did in his plane, Spirit of St. Louis. In 1932. Born Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. on February 4, 1902, in Detroit, Michigan, Lindbergh became famous for making the first solo transatlantic airplane flight in 1927. Before he took to the skies, however, Lindbergh was raised on a farm in Minnesota and the son of a lawyer and a congressman. Lindbergh studied mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin before leaving school to pursue his interest in flight. He went to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he made his first solo flight in 1923. Lindbergh became a barnstormer, or a daredevil pilot, performing at fairs and other events. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1924 and trained as an Army Air Service Reserve pilot. He later worked as an airmail pilot, flying back and forth between St. Louis and Chicago.
The Spirit of St. Louis (formally the Ryan NYP, registration: N-X-211) was the custom-built, single-engine, single-seat, high-wing monoplane that was flown by Charles Lindbergh on May 20–21, 1927, on the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight from Long Island, New York, to Paris, France, for which Lindbergh won the $25,000 Orteig Prize. Lindbergh took off in the Spirit from Roosevelt Airfield, Garden City, New York, and landed 33 hours, 30 minutes later at Aéroport Le Bourget in Paris, France, a distance of approximately 3,600 miles. One of the best-known aircraft in the world, the Spirit was built by Ryan Airlines in San Diego, California, owned and operated at the time by Benjamin Franklin Mahoney, who had purchased it from its founder, T. Claude Ryan, in 1926. The Spirit is on permanent display in the main entryway's Milestones of Flight gallery at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, District of Columbia.