The Flight: Dan Hampton Chronicles Charles Lindbergh's Sensational Transatlantic Crossing

This past week I finished Dan Hampton's The Flight, a re-telling of Charles Lindbergh's historic trans-Atlantic crossing in The Spirit of St. Louis. The author was himself a pilot who has earned numerous medals for his distinguished service as a pilot, which clearly contributed to his understanding of what Lindbergh must have experienced on his solo adventure.

There were several features of the book that helped maintain reader interest. Foremost of these was Hampton's intersplicing of historical context at various points along the journey. If the author had just told the flight portion without context, it could have left readers fighting sleep the way Lindbergh was fighting to stay awake during his flight.

There were many pieces of information that were new for me or had been forgotten. That Lindbergh did not catch up on sleep before leaving was interesting. By the time he landed in Paris he had been awake for 55 hours, no small achievement in itself. Instead of resting before the flight he decided to take in a Broadway play. The lack of sleep nearly cost him his life.

I was also unaware that Time magazine was inaugurated in 1927 and that Lindbergh became Time's first Man of the Year.

His nicknames were Lucky Lindy, the Lone Eagle and Slim, and the author chose to continually call him Slim as if they he and Charles were best buds.

It was also useful to learn about Lindbergh's childhood, what his parents were like and how they influenced the man he later became. I'd known that his parents were from rural Minnesota, but I did not know that his father had become a congressman who was opposed to the U.S. entering World War I.

Like a number of other famous people (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs come to mind) Slim also dropped out of college to pursue his passion, which in his case was flying.

Lindbergh bought his first plane for $500, which seems like a steal until you factor inflation into the cost. Today's price tag on that barnstorming machine would be just over $6200... still a pretty good deal.

The trans-Atlantic flight was a huge deal, though. Whoever made that first successful flight from New York to Paris or vice versa would be awarded a $25,000 reward called the Orteig Prize, nearly $360,000 today. Several pilots had already crashed and burned during the previous year, one French team only weeks earlier.

Lindbergh himself was unaware of how many people were following this journey once he was on his way. When he arrived in Paris more than 100,000 people met him at the airport. Souvenir hunters tore off pieces of his plane and stole his log book in the pandemonium that followed his landing.

It was also probably a wise decision to focus on the flight itself, the author giving only a cursory summation of the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh's son  (which newspapers called the crime of the century) and other post-flight events. The book focuses on the historic achievement and why Lindbergh was such a heroic figure in his time, though the fame it brought him led directly to that heartbreak.

If you can find it in you library it's called The Flight: Charles Lindbergh's Daring and Immortal 1927 Transatlantic Crossing. If not, you can find it here on Amazon.

For What It's Worth Dept: There are several scathing reviews of the book on Amazon. Half are related to some technical information that only pilots would know. The author himself flew F-16s so maybe he missed a few details. I would not have known. One of the other negative reviews recommended acquiring Lindbergh's own book about the flight. Alas. I enjoyed the ride here. Not a Pulitzer for Literature but a great moment in history captured and shared.

What are your dreams urging you to accomplish?

Spread your wings and fly!