Lindbergh flies the Atlantic solo

On May 20, 1927, the 25-year-old airmail pilot Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island in a single-engine monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, and landed at Le Bourget near Paris 33.5 hours later. He flew about 3,600 miles alone, with no radio, and a fuel tank blocking his forward view. He won the $25,000 Orteig Prize, offered since 1919 for the first nonstop New York to Paris flight, and crowds of over 100,000 mobbed the field.¹²³⁴

Others had crossed the Atlantic by air before: John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown flew nonstop from Newfoundland to Ireland in June 1919. Lindbergh's feat was to do it solo over the longer distance in a plane built for efficiency, which Ryan Airlines of San Diego made in about two months around a reliable Wright Whirlwind engine, from the company that grew out of the Wright brothers' enterprise. Several better-funded teams had failed that spring, and some died. Lindbergh became a global celebrity and toured all 48 states promoting aviation. In the next two years airline passengers, orders and investment in the United States rose sharply.¹²