"We" : $b The famous flier's own story of his life and his trans-Atlantic flight, together with his views on the future of aviationLindbergh, Charles A. (Charles Augustus)
History
"We" : $b The famous flier's own story of his life and his trans-Atlantic flight, together with his views on the future of aviation
Lindbergh, Charles A. (Charles Augustus)
Aeronautics -- Flights; Air pilots -- Biography; Transatlantic flights
After circling Lake Village I landed in a field several miles north
of town. The nearest building was a clubhouse and soon the keeper and
his family had arrived beside the plane. They invited me to stay with
them as long as I wished, but the keeper persistently refused to accept
a flight in return for his hospitality. I carried only a handful of
passengers that afternoon. The flying territory around that part of the
country was fairly good and there were a number of fields available for
planes to land in. Consequently an airplane was no longer the drawing
attraction that it was farther in the interior.
I staked the plane down much earlier than usual and went over to the
clubhouse.
Evening came on with the clearness of a full moon and open sky. The
landscape was illuminated with a soft yellow light; an ideal night for
flying. I decided to see what the country looked like from the air at
night and jokingly asked my host to accompany me. To my surprise he
willingly agreed. For some reason he had no fear of a night flight
although I had been unable to persuade him to go up with me in the
daytime. What his reaction would have been, had he known that I had
never flown after dark before, is a matter of speculation.
We untied the plane, removed the canvases from engine and cockpit, and
after a few minutes spent in warming up the motor, taxied down the
field and took-off for a moonlight flight down the Mississippi and over
Lake Village.
Later in the evening after the ship was again securely staked to the
ground and we were sitting quietly in the clubhouse, my host stated
that he had never spent a more enjoyable quarter of an hour in his life.
The next morning I was again heading towards Texas against a strong
westerly wind which retarded the speed of the Jenny so greatly
that even with my double fuel capacity it was necessary to land at
Farmerville, Louisiana, to replenish my supply. From there I flew to
Texarkana and landed between the stumps of the 1923 airport.
On the following morning I left Texarkana with a strong tail wind and
after crossing the western end of the Ozark mountains, landed near a
small town in north eastern Oklahoma where I took on a fresh supply of
fuel and again headed north towards Lincoln, Nebraska.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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