The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American Aviation

Abstract

Lindbergh was the lone hero, considered lucky to have succeeded in his Atlantic venture, but his achievement was made possible by a maturing aviation design and manufacturing infrastructure, and his "luck" was due to meticulous planning and preparation. A convert to rationalism and science, Lindbergh veered into mystical dreams of organ replacement and eternal life, then into loony advocacy of eugenics and racial superiority.

The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American Aviation. By Thomas Kessner. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. xxii, 313 pp. $27.95, isbn 978-0-19532019-0.)

More years ago than I care to remember, I talked with George R. Hann, an important figure in the development of commercial aviation in Pennsylvania, about his career in aeronautics. Hann had a vivid memory of staying up all night listening to radio reports of Charles Lindberghs May 1927 solo flight from New York to Paris. He believed that this "splendid young man gave [aviation] that additional lift" and convinced him and other potential investors rhat there were new business opportunities in aeronautics.

Thomas Kessner's book is an examination of how and why Lindbergh elicited so much popular excitement and what his status as an international hero meant for the development of aviation. At first glance it is hard to understand. After all, Lindbergh was not the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air - in fact, more than eighty people did so before his flight. Yet we know that his quiet modesty, midwestern roots, snd essential "Americanism" contributed to his celebrity, which in turn catapulted the nation and the world into the "air age." The explanation is complex, filled with personalities, politics, illusion and disillusion, and irony - all stuff that historians (and publishers) covet.

The emphasis on the ironies of Lindberghs life and accomplishments underscores how and why this book adds to the literature on Lindbergh and American aviation. Lindbergh was the lone hero, considered lucky to have succeeded in his Atlantic venture, but his achievement was made possible by a maturing aviation design and manufacturing infrastructure, and his "luck" was due to meticulous planning and preparation. We also know that the "flight of the century" was not the beginning of a new air age, but the culmination of a first phase of aeronautical development, marked by major military aircraft acquisition programs and the entry of private business into governmentregulated passenger and mail carrying. The more Lindbergh shunned the limelight the more it sought him out; the closer he got to the centers of political and economic power the more he felt distanced from the "nation whose spirit he had once been said to have embodied" (p. 223). A convert to rationalism and science, Lindbergh veered into mystical dreams of organ replacement and eternal life, then into loony advocacy of eugenics and racial superiority.

As good as his book is in elucidating the crucial intersection of Lindbergh as a person with aviation as a technology, Kessner could have immersed himself more in the growing aeronautics historiography. Not surprisingly, he relies heavily on Scott Bergs 1998 biography, Lindbergh, and an extensive range of secondary sources, but Richard K. Smiths excellent book on the navy's 1919 transadantic flight (First Across! The U.S. Navy's Transatlantic Flight of 1919, 1986) and Tom Crouch's definitive biography of the Wright brothers The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orvtlie Wright, 1989) are noticeably missing. More attention to the specialized literature might have allowed Kessner to avoid a number of factual errors as well. Despite these shortcomings, which collectively diminish an otherwise superlative analytical work, Kessner has provided specialists and generalists with an important study of Lindbergh and his meaning for flighr in America.