Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902 -1974) American
Aviator
Lindbergh is chiefly remembered for the first non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic, in May 1927. He was born on February 4, 1902, Detroit, Michigan. After attending the University of Wisconsin in Madison for two years he attended the army flying schools in Texas in 1924-’25. Next year he became an airmail pilot flying the route from St. Louis, Mo to Chicago. He obtained financial backing from a group of St. Louis businessmen to compete for the 25,000 dollar prize for the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris. He made the flight in May 1927 in the mono plane ‘Spirit of St. Louis’. The same year he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Politically naive he made certain speeches praising the German air power and advocated US neutrality in WWII, which made him very unpopular. After criticism by FDR he resigned his Aircorps Reserve Commission. During the war he acted as an consultant to industrial firms and later flew combat missions in the Pacific. After the war he was consultant to Pan American World Airways. His book ‘The Spirit of St. Louis’ discribing the Paris flight was published in 1953 which won him a Pulitzer Prize. His other works include ‘We’ (1927) and ‘Of Flight and Life’ (1948).
Lindbergh’s search for immortality is another facet of this flawed genius. “In a fascinating new book we are told how he killed his children’s pets in the name of his research, contemplated experiments on psychiatric patients and emulated Adolf Hitler in his determination to restrict the promise of eternal life to an elite of white Westerners.
Based on sound scientific principles, His work with Dr. Alexis Carrel laid the foundation for medical breakthroughs which today make the promise of perpetual life tantalisingly closer to reality.
For Lindbergh, the path leading to that groundbreaking experiment in 1935 could be traced back to his childhood when, as a shy and virtually friendless young boy growing up on a farm in Minnesota, he dreamed of becoming a doctor”.He failed to make it.(Ack:dailymail.co.uk/news)
In his later years, Lindbergh became a prolific prize-winning author, international explorer, inventor, and environmentalist.
His Private Life:
Lindberg married Anne Morrow who was the only woman who he had ever asked out on a date. . He insisted that Anne track all her household expenditures, including even 15 cents spent for rubber bands, in account books. Lindbergh saw his children for only a couple of months a year. He kept track of each child’s infractions, which included such activities as gum-chewing.
Twenty-nine years after Lindbergh’s 1974 death, the largest national daily newspaper in Germany,(Suddeutsche Zeitung) reported in late July 2003 that he had fathered three out-of-wedlock children by German hat maker Brigitte Hesshaimer (1926–2003) who had lived in the small Bavarian town just south of Munich. two years later, however, it had been further revealed that Lindbergh had also fathered four other out-of-wedlock children in Germany and Switzerland with two other mistresses.
Leave a Reply