it's not hard to understand. so the quotes are important to me. i want to put as many as they could admire. factors actually to in the back of the book that are nothing but quotes, stuff that i thought was great, but i couldn't put it in the book somewhere because i didn't have space. i actually think those two sections of the book or in some ways the most fun. ..

>> basically, when we decided to write this book which was in the fall of 2000, um, bob and i felt that we couldn't let the 75th anniversary of this historic go uncommemorated by the national air and space museum. i remember when i first came to the air and space museum about two years after i got there, in 1977, we did a 50th anniversary commemoration which was major, a major event. and we thought the best way to do this was to do a book that focused on the spirit of st. louis. but you can't talk about the spirit of st. louis without talking about lindbergh, the hero, the celebrity, the pilot, the man. because he has so many sides, so many facets, and he's so complex. and then literally as we started

writing the book, we realized that the spirit of st. louis is a conveyance of lindbergh's celebrity. and everything positive and negative that that vehicle, that aircraft brought with it. so you can't dissociate lindbergh, the man, from the object, from the artifact, the spirit of st. louis. and what began as a kind of a small format book that was going to be intended as a souvenir book that you could put in your pocket and take home with you turned into a larger project because our editor at abrams liked the manuscript so much. and he became quite an advocate of the book and encouraged us to do, you know, he said just do what you need to do. talk about whatever you want to talk about, but let's make this a book that will be remembered. and so we did. um, most of the research was from secondary sources. i think bob has a lot of sort of

innate knowledge of the aircraft over years of being its curator. and what we tried to do, i think, was to develop a kind of a synthesis of things that have been written within, perhaps, the last 25 years, the most recent of which, of course, is scott burg's pulitzer prize-winning biography. but there are other things too. books about ann mara lindbergh that has been written about in the recent past a book i stumbled on about lindbergh and fdr in which that whole controversy of lindbergh versus the new deal, and fdr was brought to light for me in a way that had never been elucidated before. so we took from everywhere, and what we tried to do was to write a book about the spirit of st.

louis that also talked about lindbergh and try to give you some idea of what this person was like. and i think it worked. i think the book really exceeded our expectations in so many ways. i think we're very happy that much of the book, the illustrations come from our own collection. it made me realize how vast our collection is of photographs, particularly of other things. we had very fine original frat my, color photography of things in our collection that relate to lindbergh and, of course, of the spirit of st. louis. the collection of photographs wasn't very strong in the latter period of his life, so i took a trip to yale university and found in the lindbergh collection there quite a number of things that fleshed out lindbergh's life toward the end, after the, after world world war

ii. basically, i'd like to thank eric him el for having the faith in us to do the book and then giving us his encouragement all along and his aassistance, particularly gayle hand el who took over the project at the end and shepherded it through to publication. i'm going to talk a little bit about lindbergh, a hero, celebrity, goat in some ways and to talk about why i think in the 21st century it's difficult for anyone aside from, perhaps, an aircraft enthusiast or an aviation enthusiast to take the idea of the pilot hero seriously. and the reason i say that is because, um, flying has become so routine now. you can literally hop on an airplane and go anywhere in the

world you want to go. and not only that, but aircraft themselves have become so sophisticated, commercial aircraft in particular have become so sophisticated that they literally fly themselves. and so what you have now is a kind of a person who's called a pilot, but he's actually just shepherding the aircraft from point to point. of course, he's got to be there if an emergency arises but, literally, these aircraft can fly themselves. that was not true in 1927. and i think one of the reasons why we remember lindbergh so fondly was because the transatlantic flight in particular was a very dangerous flight. and if you look at the spirit of st. louis, you'll realize, you know, how fragile-looking that aircraft is. it really wasn't. and, of course, he had quite a hand in its design and its creation, its building. he knew what he was doing. he knew exactly what he needed

to fly across the atlantic. he knew the kind of aircraft that would accomplish that feat. but today the whole notion of the pilot hero, i think, is something that we tend not to think about too much even in the military. it's really not as much of a factor as it was, for example, in world world war i where you d aces and pilot celebrities of all nations. in world war ii, same sort of situation. but less so over the years. and i think tom wolf's book, "the right stuff," really puts this all in perspective when he talks about the idea of the astronauts versus, say, chuck yeager, the ultimate test pilot. and the right stuff is that sort of indefinable thing that people like chuck yeager have. that enables them to take these

risks and, you know, come out of it alive. and that's, essentially, what lindbergh did. he was someone who came out of, literally out of obscurity, flying solo across the atlantic ocean nonstop, a distance of 3,610 miles, 33 hours and 0 minutes -- 30 minutes, thereby becoming the most celebrated and well known public figure of the 20th century. but ultimately, i think, what happened to lindbergh is that perceptions of him became so overstated by the media as we know it now, the press in those days that they outstripped reality. and ultimately, i think lindbergh was very uncomfortable with the notion of celebrity, he shied away from it. he was a very private man, and i think that many of the things that happened to him later on, the controversial things, are a direct result of this celebrity which, of course, was caused by

the transatlantic flight. there's little to distinguish lindbergh, his life before the transatlantic flight. you literally -- he literally came out of obscurity. although his father was a uncle congressman -- u.s. congressman from minnesota's sixth district. but he was a midwesterner, he grew up in little falls, minnesota. he tended the family estate called lynn home with his two sisters from, his half-sisters from a previous marriage. and the thing, i think there are a couple of things that i learned about lindbergh as a young man that stood him in good stead when he decided that he was going to fly across the atlantic. and compete for the prize. and one of them was self-sufficiency. he learned to drive a car when he was 14, and he took, i think he took his family on a very expensive car trip at a very

young age. and by the age of 16, he's running the family farm entirely by himself. and during this time he's, you can tell if you read biographies of him that he's very mechanically-minded. he's very comfortable with machinery. and that's another thing that's important about him, i think. he has a rather undistinguished time at the university of wisconsin. he's studying mechanical engineering. he left after a short period of time. and while he was there, he preferred riding his motorcycle and sort of palling around with a couple of friends than he did studying. but he became interested in aviation during that time and decided he wanted to become a pilot. he had kind of a hit and miss aspect, his learning to fly. first he became a barnstormer,

barnstormed all over the midwest and the south until 1924. finally learned how to fly sort of piecemeal. and for a time he was a wing walker. and he writes rather humorously about his time as a barnstormer and wing walker. but in 1924 he entered the u.s. army air service and went into pilot training. and this is the first time you get a sense that lindbergh has a clear purpose in life, that he's become dedicated to aviation. he graduates first in his class, and he's one of 18 surviving cadets from an original class of 104. so it wasn't easy. getting through this training was not an easy thing. but as a result he feels that he's obtained, received or has now a renewed purpose in life. and he goes to work for the robertson aircraft corporation in 1926, flying the mail from

st. louis the to chicago. and it's during one of these flights that he decides why not try to fly the atlantic? i don't think he was particularly interested in the money which was, actually, a lot of money in those days, $25,000 established by raymond ortig, a new york hotel owner, for the first nonstop flight in either direction, new york to paris or paris to new york. and ortig's purpose was to promote air vegas as -- air vegas as many of the prizes in the those days. i'll try to cover this ground more quickly to give my colleague time to talk about the spirit of st. louis. but, basically, he has trouble at first finding an airplane and finding financial backing which he eventually does find in st. louis, missouri. and that's why the aircraft is called the spirit of st. louis. he arranges with ryan airlines

of san diego, california, to build an airplane capable of crossing the atlantic nonstop, and he helps to design and test fly the aircraft. he flies the airplane 1600 miles across the united states making a stop in st. louis on the way and setting a transcontinental flying record of 21 hours and 40 minutes. and when he gets to new york, there's a very short window of opportunity for him to actually take off. when he hasn't slept, i think, for a night, he's awake the entire time of his flight. he drifts off now and then, but comes back realizing how dangerous it is for him to fall asleep. but it's estimated he was awake for, what, 60 hours bob? 63 hours before he made the flight, so he was very, very

tired. i'm sorry, i guess 33 hours on the flight and then 30 hours beforehand. so the whole flight is really about struggling to stay wake. and make no mistake about it, this was a dangerous flight. first of all, by crossing, by taking the route that he took, the polar route, he extended the distance that anyone had ever flown across the atlantic. and there had been others who had flown the atlantic before lindbergh. the distinction here, and it's an important distinction, is that he did it nonstop and solo. so he takes off from roosevelt field on the morning of may 20, 1927. the entire flight, like i said, is one in which he struggles to stay awake and to record things as they're happening to him, to take measurements of his fuel

and to try to stay on course. and when he gets to paris, he's really amazed at the reception he receives, thinking to himself he's going to need a letter of introduction because nobody will know who he is, but everybody knew who he was. and the rest, you might say, is history. i'm really not going to get into the aftermath of the flight too much. there's speculation about the ultimate meaning of the flight. john william ward, a well known american historian, has talked about what's so attractive to the american people about this flight. it kind of has the ramifications of 20th century technology, the aircraft, the spirit of st. louis flying across the atlantic in an airplane, a mod earn invention -- modern invention. and then also looking backward to a pioneering past. and i think that works, too, certainly. but perhaps the most important thing, to me anyway, is the media machinery that was in

place in the 1920s, in the late 1920s that reported on lindbergh's flight and made it really, literally, turned it into an event. and this kind of fits in with the whole period of 1920s as being one in which information is being given, is being provided by newspapers, by the radio in record time. probably in faster time than we ever, we ever knew it. and there's also an emphasis on record breaking and speed. speed's very important in the 12920s -- 1920s. i think that one thing we don't really talk about very much in the book that's important, and that is that there were two flights that lindbergh made, two tours that he made after the transatlantic flight, after he got back from paris. and one of them was a tour of

the united states that was sponsored by the daniel guggenheim fund for the promotion of aeronautics. took place july to october, 1927. 95 days he covered 82 cities, 23 state capitals, 22,350 miles, 260 hours in the air, estimated that he, that 30-50 million people saw the spirit of st. louis on that tour and that he made 147 speeches and attended 69 dinners. and i like to say that he probably ate a lot of rubber chicken during that circuit. but to be, really to be fair and to be serious about this, this was another incident where lindbergh concern and i think this is true of the transatlantic flight, too, where he's trying to show the safety and reliability of air transportation and to encourage

the use of the existing commercial mail and passenger services to promote the development of airports and communications by air. and in all of the, in the entire tour he was only late once, delayed by fog in portland. so i think the tour proved that aviation could be viable, could be commercially successful. and the important thing i think about this flight, this tour is that it opened a huge door to lindbergh. he became associated with transcontinental air transport which eventually became twa and was called the lindbergh line, and he was responsible for laying out this first passenger route in the united states. that's something that's extremely important and that's forgotten about that the spirit of st. louis was involved in. the other thing, the other tour

that's very important was his goodwill tour to latin america which took place in december 1927 at the invitation of dwight morrow, the u.s. ambassador to mexico, and who would later become his father-in-law, lindbergh's father-in-law. but in this light which lasted until january, february 1928, he flew to, from mexico -- from washington to mexico city to central america through the caribbean ending up in havana and then back to st. louis. and this was, as i said, at dwight morrow's request to try to develop a sense of goodwill toward latin america which had been rather anti-american at the time as a result of the situation in mexico and nicaragua. the importantthing about this flight -- the important thing about this flight, though, is that it makes lindbergh known to

one, the head of pan american airwaves. and lindbergh eventually becomes affiliated as a technical consultant to pan be american and lays out their routes, a much more complicated task, i think, than, of course, the u.s. passenger route, transcontinental route. but that flight's important because it really does open that door to lindbergh. he becomes affiliated with an international airline, what eventually becomes an international airline, and it paves the way for regularly-scheduled service in the united states to latin america. now, i was just going to say a few words about his kind of tarnished image. as you probably know or have read about at some point, lindbergh becomes very impatient with the press. he feels that they're intruding into his life. of course, the kidnapping of his

first child, kidnapping and murder of his first child literally drives him away from the country in 1938. during a visit to nazi germany, he receives the service cross of the german eagle and is severely criticized for it for many years afterwards. he starts to make -- he comes back to the united states, starts to become involved in the american nonintervention movement in world war ii and makes numerous speeches against american intervention in the war. he publishes articles that kind of promote this idea, and also he becomes controversial because of his, not only because of his sort of affection for nazi germany, but also because of his anti-semitism. and in 1941 he joined the

america first committee, he was probably the most well known organization against american intervention in the war. in september 1941 he makes a very infamous speech in des moines, iowa, in which he names the british, fdr and the jews as dangerous influences toward american involvement in the war and is soundly criticized for that. never theless, when america attacked pearl harbor in december 1941, he attempts to get back in uniform. he had, he had resigned his commission in the air service as a result of some criticism from the roosevelt administration. when he attempts to get his commission back, he's told that he's a bad risk, and so he decides to become a consultant, technical representative. he goes to the pacific, he

initially works for henry ford on the b-24 in michigan and then becomes a technical representative for united aircraft in the pacific. after the war his reputation is rehabilitated, his commission's restored, and i think the interesting thing at that point is that he begins to become very contemplative. his interest in science and technology, which he's had his entire life, sort of gives way to a concern for the planet, spiritual values and spiritual development. and his entire life, i think, after that point really is devoted to these concerns. so i think, i think he's a very complicated person. i never tire of reading about him or thinking about him because he is so controversial and so important to the history of aviation. probably the most important

figure in the history of aviation in the united states, i'd have to say, without a doubt. i think his he roarism is a matter of -- heroism is a matter of respect. i think the celebrity he has is often passed for heroism. i don't think it is particularly heroic. i think he certainly was courageous to fly the atlantic. he took numerous risks. one thing about the his life before the transatlantic life that was impressed on me that if in learning how to fly was it was a very dangerous thing for him to do, and he certainly learned his craft and learned it well. but if i were going to say, he starts to understand technology has to merge with human values if civilization is going to survive. and with true heroism, he's imperfect. he, i don't think we appreciate

him enough for what he did for aviation in the united states, and perhaps we criticize him too much for things that he said and did, and certainly not going to let him off the hook for saying some things that he should not have said. but, again, he's very complicated. you have to look at him in context, and there's a great deal of context here. and so with that, i think i'll give way to my colleague, bob van der lin, who's going to talk about the aircraft and also show you some slides from our collection. >> thank you, dom. thanks, sam, and like to thank everybody at the archives for having us here. this is one of our favorite subjects. gee, i didn't touch anything, and it works. that's amazing. well, dom can just explained to you who lindbergh was.

and i'm here to explain how he did it. and why did he do it. that's lindbergh right there. as the chief pilot for the robertson aircraft corporation. chief pilot meant he was the first pilot, and he hired the other two guys. airmail and the airline industry was very small. today most people don't understand where the airline industry came from. it's like an automobile, it's like the telephone. it's always there. it's such an integral part of everyday life, you cannot fathom a world without the telephone, television or the airline system. well, back in 1926 when the post office turned over the delivery of airmail contracts, airmail to contract airmail carriers which was a longwinded way of saying airlines, robert szob was one of the first. in fact, they got the second route, cam number 2 which was from st. louis to chicago, and as dom mentioned, was operated by robertson aircraft corporation. it was founded by the reportson

brothers of st. louis, and reportson is one of the predecessors of today's american airlines. so you could say that lindbergh was american airlines' first pilot, and you wouldn't be too far off. there are a lot of other airlines that have merged into american, but that was an important one. well, he was carrying the mail in 1926 when he was flying, you heard about the ortig prize that dom mentioned, a $25,000 prize for being the first person to fly between new york and paris in either direction. didn't have to do it solo. but he recognized that perhaps that was the safest, the most -- and the best way of doing it. because while he had learned about the, learned about the prize, but in september of 1926 he didn't read the newspaper when the famous french pilot and an ace from world war i, rene, franc had attempt today win the prize by taking off in this

massive sikorsky f-35 headed for paris. well, he didn't get off the ground. the aircraft was so overweight, it had three engines, massive amounts of fuel on board, it had a crew of four, it had radios, it had beds, it had all sorts of things onboard, it was completely decked out. and it was much too heavy. lindbergh, he just sort of pondered this one night as he was flying over illinois, and if i remember correctly in his book, "spirit of st. louis," he was apparently somewhat other by yore ya when it dawned on him, why couldn't i do it? i'm not a famous aviator, but i'm 24 years old, you realize how young 24 years old is. he'd flown for the army, he'd learned the fly in the army, he'd been flying, you know, barnstorming for many years, and in his flying for robertson, he had encountered just about every

form of bad weather and tricky flying patterns, he bailed out twice, but he developed superb flying skills and an ability to fly in all kinds of weather at night exhausted. he'd stayed up 24 hours many times. so the idea of staying awake 33 and a half hours wasn't too intimidating for him. and he said the idea of a trimoded airplane, he could understand why people were thinking about tri-motiers, but to him three engines just multiplies the chance of engine failure by three. so why don't you entrust yourself and your life to one engine? it'd make for a much smaller aircraft, a much lighter aircraft, one that would be much more fuel efficient and much easier to get off the ground and much more liable to cover that kind of distance. but just make sure that you choose a very, very fine engine and it's well maintained, and you shouldn't have any trouble. and, in fact, that's what

happened. he got the idea, and he approached the robertsons first, and they -- he sold them on it. other backers in st. louis, bankers and others, came onboard. and they supplied the money necessary to do this. it was about $15,000, he estimated, would take to build the aircraft and fly it. the prize was for $25,000, but as dom mentioned, he did not do this for the money. he did it to prove that it could be done, and he did it was by flying -- because by flying the mail he understood while air travel was in its infancy -- the mail was being flown regularly, but people were not -- he realized with a big demonstration like this, flying nonstop between two major cities, that it would put aviation on the map and demonstrate very clearly that perhaps the age of commercial aviation where humans could fly commercially was not that far away. and, in fact, that was the case. well, he approached, went to new

york city and approached the bilanca company. they were building an airplane, wb2, that had a very advanced engine on it, the right whirlwind engine. he wanted that engine, he wanted that airplane. it was a superb airplane. he thought he'd worked out a deal for it when the owner of the airplane said it's great, it's fine, great idea, of course, i'm going to pick the pilot. and lindbergh says, no, no, i'm the pilot. and he says, well, no, i'm not going to pick you. you're an obscure airmail pilot. i want to pick someone i trust and know. and lindbergh said thanks, but no thanks. so he left disheartened. went around looking for another manufacturer. others turned him down. but a small, very small company in san diego, california, ryan airlines, was building an m-2, was building a mail plane called the m-2. he approached them, wrote a letter in december of '26 and

asked if they could fabricate an aircraft based on their m-2 for him in two months so he could have the aircraft ready when the flying season began again in the spring of 1927. and when i say ryan was small, i mean small. the entire work force from the president of the company to the engineer to the secretary to the person sweeping the floor numbered 35 people. when you look at a boeing or a lockheed martin where they hire tens of thousands of people ryan -- which later became a major player in aviation -- they had 35 people. and 35 people was what it took, and it was remarkable that they did it. working almost around the clock. once the contracts were signed, the parts arrived. lindbergh showed up in san diego in february, and they started working. lindbergh at first was not particularly well liked on the floor because he was down there

looking over the shoulders of donald hall, the designer, and over the shoulders of the workmen down there that are like, you know, go away. what do you know about this stuff? he was a stickler for detail, and he was pestering these people. but after a while they came to realize that he knew what he was talking about because of his experience flying the likes of this airmail plane, he knew some things about aircraft design even they didn't know. one thing he insisted on the aircraft, instead of having one solid steel fuel line, he had, he had the designers cut the fuel line every 18 inches and put in a little rubber gasket just so it would dampen the vibration. one of the things that often brought down a mail plane was a fuel line that had ripped itself loose because of the viuation. so he had that done. and over a while, after a while he gained the respect of the work force down there because they realized he was completely committed to this aircraft, and

he also -- and it dawned on them after a while as well that, obviously, his life depended on this. so he was making sure every inch of this airplane worked. technology, ain't it 2k3wr57bd? grand? that's lindbergh right there after the flight, but he's standing in front of the spirit of st. louis. and even though the aircraft, the picture's a little out of she we think so, the most important thing about the aircraft, well, that's the airplane on its very first flight, april 10, 927. 19267. but the most important, most technologically significant thing about this aircraft, it's not a particularly advanced airplane, and i'll get into that a little bit more, but what really made it special was that engine. a whirlwind engine, 223 horsepower, air cooled and air cooled was the way to go because now you didn't have to have pipes, plumbing, fuel pumps -- not fuel pumps, water pumps,

radiators, all sorts of things that could fail and leak. and if you're trusting yourself to one engine, you want to make sure you eliminate all the potential problems possible. and that being an air-cooled engine, it eliminated that. but ryan had been around for several years, and they were known for their reliability. but the j5 was a special engine and, in fact, this engine was being used by all the ore competitors for the ortig prize. the famous commander, richard burr, who was purported to be the first purpose to fly across the north and south poles, was in the competition. he had a large trimotor, but the motors were the right whirlwinds. clarence chamberlain and charles levine, the person he tried to buy the aircraft off of, were equipped with the whirlwind. why this engine? it was the first engine -- i'm going to get a little technical,

but bear with me. the first engine to have sodium-cooled exhaust valves. one of the worse problems that aircraft had in terms of reliability was that the exhaust valves on the engines would burn. and when they burned, they would warp. when they warped, the engine would fail. by drilling out the stem of the, of the valve and filling it about halfway with powdered sodium, for some reason -- and i can't explain the chemistry or the physics behind it -- but that was enough to draw enough heat away from the top of the cylinder head out into the airstream where the air could cool it and, basically, that valve eliminated completely the problem of burned exhaust valves and warped, warped valve heads. and that type of valve is used in every engine after that, it's been used in high-powered automobile engines, all the racing engines today have that because they work so successfully. the other thing that this engine was the fist to have on it --

first to have on it was self-lubricating rocker arms. again, the top of the engine there where you can see the exposed cylinder, you see the pushrods going up to it. there's a housing over that, and this is what's important. that area over there is enclosed, and oil is pumped through there. and it kept all the mechanism up there lubricated. that's one thing that normally it couldn't lubricate, up there on the rocker arms quite often couldn't be lubricated. so you had to grease the rocker arms every couple of hours while you were flying. when you're flying three, four, five hours, that's no big deal. most aircraft only flew two or three hours anyway. you come down, address 'em up, and you're fine. flying 33 and a half hours was another story. they needed that kind of attention before that and, obviously, liquid berg couldn't pull off, stop and land, anything like that. so he wanted that engine. and he got that engine. ryan built that especially for

him as they did for all the apartments, but because lindbergh was a truly obscure pilot from the midwest, they put their least experienced guy on it. they put their best guy on byrd's engine, he was the famous man. but rutledge knew what he was doing. while they didn't fabricate the engine for him, they assembled it out of the best participants they could -- parts they could find. so the engine, once put together, was a masterpiece and extremely reliable, barely burned any oil. for the entire flight across the atlantic, it burn withed about five gallons of oil which by the standards of the day was remarkable because he carried 25 gallons thinking he'd burn most of that. even today aircraft engines, piston engines burn a lot more oil than that. but they took great care in that, and it paid off. so that's really the most remarkable thing about the

aircraft, is its engine. but the airplane itself is pretty neat. it's conventional in every way, shape and form. it has a wooden wing, it's covered in cotton fabric. the fuselage is made out of steel tubes that are welded together. it, too, is covered in cotton fabric which is doped to bring, to waterproof it and make it nice and taught. it's as streamlined an aircraft as you can get for about 1927. he wanted it that way. he had a large, wide landing gear off a popular aircraft they were designing at the time. the wing is off the douglas m-2, only it's lengthened a bit from 42 feet to 46 feet. it's a very successful wing, and one thing i found out in the research that i didn't know at the time was that famed aircraft designer jack northrup, a gentleman who designed the northrup alpha, the northrup corporation's named after,

designed the lockheed vega and a whole host of aircraft, the dc-3, the finest aircraft in history, he was lent to ryan from douglas to fix the problem ryan had with the wing, and he fixed for the m-2, and that wing was incorporated in the spirit of st. louis. but two things about this aircraft are of note. the first thing is you take a look very carefully, you can see the that there's no windshield. there's no way he could see directly in front of him, and i'll show you how he got around that. he didn't think that was necessary. what was important to him was to find places to put fuel, lots of fuel. the aircraft was designed to carry about 425 gallons of gasoline. by the time they had it all loaded up for the flight, the actual flight across the atlantic, they managed to squeeze in about 450 gallons of gasoline. most of that went into the main fuel tank right in front of him, about a 200-gallon tank, another

80 gallons in front of it and about 120, 130 gallons were in three fuel tanks up in the wing as well. but he was an old airmail pilot, as i said, and he was use today flying airplanes with really long nosed that he couldn't see on takeoff where he was going in the first place, and that wasn't a problem. all he knew, you lean out the cockpit, that wasn't a problem for him. it still amazed him to his dying day that people thought it was so amazing that people couldn't see in front of him, he said any pie knows that you you can, move airplane a little bit, no problem. the other thing, oh, the other reason that the fuel was in front, from his experience with airmail especially flying old world war i vintage bombers, in world war i quite a few pilots made successful crash landings in the aircraft only to be crushed by the fuel tank. for some reason, the designers put the fuel tank behind the pilot. so the last thing he wanted was

the fuel tank behind him in case of an accident, so he had it put in front of him for safety reasons, also to keep the center of gravity as close to the center of the aircraft as possible as he burned the fuel off. but that worked very well. the other thing was, remember, this aircraft was built in, as i said, only two months. and that meant they had to use existing parts where they could, and one of them was the tail of the aircraft. if you take a look at the fin and the rudder, that is right off a ryan m-2 mail plane. the designer knew that rudder was too small, lindbergh knew it was too small. paul wanted to sit down and design a bigger one, but lindbergh said, no, there isn't enough time and, besides, that's not enough rudder that allows the airplane to basically fly itself. so this aircraft was very unstable. it took a very good pilot to fly it and, of course, lindbergh was one of the best pilots ever to

take to the air. if you didn't fly it all the time, the aircraft would fall off on, just fall away very quickly. it wouldn't -- like a curtis jenny or some other airplanes, you know, drone merrily along. the moment you took your hands off the control, feet off the rudder pedals, away it went. well, lindbergh figured that's not a bad thing, maybe it'll help keep me awake. well, guess what? that's exactly what happened. that little shortcut probably saved his life. because about 20 hours into the flight, he was so sleepy, he was seeing ghosts in the back of the aircraft. and on several occasions he did fall asleep only to be awakened when the aircraft, the motion of the aircraft brought him back. it was a very close thing on many occasions along that flight. 33 and a half hours is a long time to stay awake, and as dom mentioned, he was up a long time before that. so it's no wonder he was seeing

spirits in the back of the aircraft. and that little feature was extremely important. but with that, um, oh, the other thing is the aircraft weighed about 2500 pounds which is less than the average automobile. full up with fuel it weighed about 5,000 pounds which is about the size of a big cadillac. it's still not very big. today you hop in an airliner, 747 weighs 800,000 pounds across the atlantic. think of that next time you decide to hop in and fly somewhere. it's like you're wrapped in this cocoon of all this aluminum and all the systems, all that take care of you, he's wrapped in a little bit of, you know, 5,000 poundsover, well, actually, 2,000 pounds of aircraft, another 3,000 pounds of fuel. be in this little came, tiny little thing. there's the definition of courage right there, just doing that in that airplane. but the aircraft wasn't, i mean, it was designed specifically for

the flight, and that's exactly what happened. and it worked extremely well. um, there's the aircraft as we have it suspended in the building. i'll talk quickly, we're about out of time. you know those little patches on the back, over time it has split, but you'll notice on the side of the cockpit right there -- [inaudible] that is one way he could see ahead of himself. that's the periscope that was installed. he didn't want that on there, but one of the members of the crew at ryan was, had been in the navy, and he was in the submarine service, and he said, look, i want you to be able to see directly ahead of you. there's sometimes where you'll really need to do this, and lindbergh reluctantly agreed. he was afraid of the extra weight, stick it out in the airstream, it'll slow him down. it didn't. and when he took off from long island, the aircraft was so overweight with fuel that he had

to fly at very low altitudes for several hours before he burned off enough fuel to get up to some altitude. so that periscope enabled him to avoid trees, smokestacks and other, and tall buildings. smokestacks were definitely a problem back then. but that helped him get around it. so you can see it's a very conventional looking airplane. it's conventionally braced, nothing really high-tech about it. he wanted only proven technology in it. there's a close-up of the periscope as you see on the instrument panel. he would look there, and you notice there's a little -- [inaudible] levers pull in and push out. and it did exactly what he wanted it to. the aircraft itself, the instruments or for it time it

had, pardon the phrase, state-of-the-art instrumentation. he had everything a current airplane has today, you know, the rate of climb indicator, altimeter, obviously had a tack comer the on it, an indicator, early version of that. he had a magnetic compass that was directly above him. it was positioned in such a way to be away from as much metal as possible. problem was, it was right over his head, so he couldn't read it directly so the bendix company which made the compass had a type of compass that actually had the numbers on it reversed. so he could see it by looking in the mirror, which you see right there. that's the compass, that's the mirror. looking to get the compass reading from it. everything else on it was very straightforward except for this device right there.

that's the indicator for the 1927 equivalent of gps. it was known as the earth inductor compass. it's exactly like gps except that it didn't work. [laughter] the whole idea was, um, if you see -- i don't have a picture here, but if you see the aircraft, a little windmill on the rear of the fuselage that would spin around. there was a generator underneath it, and that would generate electrical field, and the devices onboard would actually align the instrument with the earth's magnetic field. so theoretically, you could tune in a heading and know which way you're going. and that was an indicator, you would set your heading on a device on the floor. and in his case you just pointed it east. and that little indicator would tell you whether you're right or left of the heading. the problem was, it froze up, it was unreliable. the magnetic field was not all that reliable, and while he had it onboard, he didn't trust it.

he managed to fly all the way across the atlantic primarily by dead reckoning, by the compass, by checking the drift of the wind. and what is remarkable -- although he doesn't, he never claimed to be an expert navigator at this. he said, you know, what's the big deal? just point it east, you're going to hit europe. which is true, but keep in mind when he hit europe, that was -- it was ireland, he made landfall within three miles of his projected course. and that's not bad. so he's being, he was being overly modest, this guy was one heck of a fine pilot and a fine navigator. and even though he was falling asleep and fighting the wind and the weather, he made landfall within three miles. that tells me more about lindbergh, the pilot, than just about anything else. that wasn't an accident, that was lindbergh. but that's basically what he looked at for 33 and a half hours. fuel -- down below you see these valves down there, each one of

those, excuse me, a pet cock there controlled the flow from one of the five fuel tanks, and every hour he would drain the fuel evenly to keep the aircraft in balance. had little tick marks, he marked it in pencil to make sure he would remember when he did it. that's one way he kept, to keep awake was just by ticking this off. but it worked. and there's the proof. he actually landed. he did not say, i am here. when he landed in paris, the closest we know is are there any mechanics here? because he was worried about the airplane. all the other stuff you've heard, nah, he didn't say it. but it gives you some idea of the fame he walked into, not knowing at all what to expect. that's the spirit of st. louis in london. he flew it from paris to brussels and then from brussels to london, and then from london

they crated it up and shipped it back to the united states onboard the cruiser memphis and brought it back here. but that's some idea the size of crowds that would accompany him wherever he went. and for the next year or so wherever he and the st. louis went, they had crowds like that to meet him. the gentleman on the left is paul gasher, he -- garber, he collected the spirit of st. louis, and that's the aircraft hanging there, and that's jennings randolph who helped get the building built -- not the building, but the authorization to approve the establishment of the national air museum. the legend has it that paul wrote the telegram for the secretary of the smithsonian to, and it was sent while lindbergh was still in flight. that was the legend at the air and space museum and, unfortunately, when i looked at the copy of the telegram, it was sent two days after lindbergh landed. but that doesn't diminish the fact that paul and the museum was on top of this. when lindbergh woke up and came

to his senses, he saw the telegram from the smithsonian asking for the aircraft, and he said, yes. it took a while to get it. he said i don't own the airplane, i'll have to get the approval of my backers. well, they had already given him the airplane because they were so pleased with him. and he and his backers sold the airplane to us for a dollar. so somebody offered me $5 for it the other day, but i turned them down. [laughter] it's been in our collection since 1928, and that's it being pulled up the road. the wings were taken off, and it was literally towed through the streets from bolling air force base, army air service base at that time, through the streets of washington up into arts and industries where it was suspended in may 1928, almost a year -- actually, it was about a year to the day of his flight across the atlantic. and this is a shot our photographer, eric long, took

with his brand new fisheye lens. he was very proud of picture. it shows you all of our aircraft from a unique perspective, underneath the right flyer. and there's the spirit of st. louis there. very fine company with the right flyer, the bell-x1 and a whole host of other aircraft and spacecraft. and with that, i'll bring our talk to the end and open the floor to questions. thank you very much for coming. >> all right. questions? yes, sir. >> was the, how was the -- [inaudible] was that graf te-fed? -- gravity-fed? >> they had fuel tanks up above in case there was a problem, and, of course, there was a pump, i believe. >> i notice he didn't wear a parachute. >> parachute, he thought, was deadweight. he did have a life raft onboard. people insisted he take a radio onboard, and he said, well, who am i going to talk to? if i go down, a radio's not

going to help me. especially a radio from 1927, monstrously heavy. >> unreliable. >> yeah, and very heavy. so why carry it? he did have a raft, he had some provisions. the famous five sandwiches as well. he had some survival rations along with him. he had fishing line, an arm burst cup which was an odd cup that sort of looks like this, the theory being you could breathe boo it, and it would con -- breathe into it, and it would condense the water from your breath just in case he went down and an inflatable life raft, but that was it. no parachute. he was like, what's the point? >> yes, sir. >> after studying his life, how do you further explain his anti-jewish belief and attacks? it was very disturbing to me just a few weeks ago at the holocaust museum they showed an old front-page headline from one of his most notorious speeches.

i don't know if that was the des moines -- >> had to have been the des moines speech. >> but it was dated september 11th, 1941, actually 60 years before the september 11th, 2001. >> you know, i don't have an explanation for it. i think, actually, i think my explanation is that anti-semitism was rather pref vent in the united states -- prevalent in the united states during that time. >> [inaudible] >> and lindbergh made the mistake of expressing it in public. i think it is it was a sentiment that was shared by many people in his is circle. there's some speculation that when he was in england, he was associated with a set that was, essentially, isolationist and anti-semitic, that he picked it up there. i don't think so. i think it was a sentiment that

goes back to the populist era of the united states -- >> nativist. >> nativist. this feeling that jews and catholics were outsiders, that they didn't belong here, etc., etc. and i think it's just something that's ingrained in the american culture. and still is today to some extent. >> look at american culture just in the '30s, just in the literature and the passing references to african-americans and jewish citizens as well. it's very derogatory, and this is on the front page of ordinary newspapers and magazines. >> henry ford made kind of a career out of being anti-semitic, so -- >> it's not an excuse, but it's an explanation. >> yes. >> -- anti-semitic -- >> it's hard to say. it's hard to say. there's not enough been done on this question of lindbergh's anti-semitism, which i think is a very interesting question. and i think it's intimately tied up with this sort of pro-nazi position that he took too.

and you can't, you can't put a good face on that, i don't think, no matter how hard you try. it's there. it's definitely there. >> final question. >> on his tour after the flight, did he take the spirit of st. louis to those 23 state capitals and the caribbean or to the -- [inaudible] the transatlantic flight, was that the final flight? >> it was taken by ship back, coolidge wasn't about to risk this national hero crossing the atlantic. >> he wanted -- lindbergh wanted to fly it, actually wanted to fly it around the world, i think. >> [inaudible] >> but coolidge, president coolidge knew that he was kind of important to the american people, and so he sent the cruiser memphis to pick him up and the airplane and bring him back to the united states. and then there were celebrations in new york, washington and st. louis, i think. a huge one in new york city, probably one of the biggest -- >> biggest ones ever. >> yeah. huge ticker-tape parade and one here too. >> but he flew it, he was the only person ever to fly it.

it flew 480 hours total, something like that. >> yeah. >> but he was the only person ever to fly it. and he flew it all over the united states and all over latin america. on occasion he took up passengers, but on his lap. but he was the only one to fly it. but, yeah, he -- from my understanding, he's about the only one who could fly it. it's a very hard airplane to fly. the story goes that one of the replicas that was made for the movie, "spirit of st. louis," was being flown by paul plant, one of the movie stunt pilots, and he didn't like the airplane. he said this thing, a handful. it just wants to, you know, go anywhere it wants to. it's not a very steady airplane. and they allowed lindbergh to fly it. and lindbergh flew it around with a big grin on his face and said, the guys did a great job, this flies just like --

[laughter] mantz got a new appreciation for how good he was. >> ladies and gentlemen -- [inaudible] prison -- [applause] >> every sunday at 6 p.m. eastern booktv airs a program from our archives that coincides with a significant occasion that happened that week in history. for more history programming, check out american history television. ahtv features 48 hours of people and events that help document the american story. watch american history tv on c-span3 or visit c-span.org/history. >> i work a lot now especially on sort of the build of our new be site with this younger generation of digital natives. and from their point of view, they feel like old media is insufficiently fact checked. one of the things that drives them crazy is anything that doesn't have a link to the source. >> uh-huh. >> so, actually, being inaccurate with your sourcing is