The Spirit of ST Louis Read Online Free PDF

the Wright Corporation, something more substantial than an idea. I'll have to get other people to go into the project with me—men with both influence and money. Then I'll be in a different position when I negotiate for a plane. I can say that I represent a St. Louis organization which intends to purchase an airplane for the New York-to-Paris flight, and that we are considering, among others, the Bellanca. That ought to impress the Wright Corporation. That would just reverse our positions: then they'd be trying to sell their product to me instead of my trying to sell an idea to them. If I have proper backing, maybe I can get a reduction in price. Possibly the Wright. Corporation would go into partnership with us. And if they won't, I can try other manufacturers—Fokker, and Huff-Daland, for instance.
    Above everything else looms the question of finance. I have a few thousand dollars, invested for me by my mother in Detroit. This includes childhood savings, small amounts sent home from my pay as a flying cadet, and profits from my years of barnstorming. It's a reserve I've built up slowly and carefully to safeguard my flying career—to cover a crashed plane, or a bad season. I've depended on that reserve to let me stay in aviation. If I spend it on an unsuccessful venture – – Well, a financial reserve isn't quite as important as it used to be. Now that I'm an experienced pilot, I can always get some kind of a job flying. I can afford to take some risk with that money. But all my money put together would pay for only a fraction of a Bellanca. How does one organize a major flying project? How did Commander Byrd get money for his polar expedition? Who finances De Pinedo on his flights?
    For the St. Louisians who might be interested in taking part, I have two major arguments. First, I'll show them how a nonstop flight between America and Europe will demonstrate the possibilities of aircraft, and help place St. Louis in the foreground of aviation. Second, I'll show them that a modern airplane is capable of making the flight to Paris, and that a successful flight will cover its own costs because of the Orteig prize. Then, of course, as additional talking points, there are all the records one could break and the places one could fly with a plane like the Wright-Bellanca. But where shall I start? To whom shall I go with my project? I have friends in the city, but most of them are aviators too, and men in aviation seldom have much money.
    As I cruise back over the route to St. Louis, practical thinking alternates with a feeling of awe toward a project of such magnitude—a flight over the whole Atlantic Ocean—a flight through, air, between the very hemispheres of earth! How can I do, why should I dare, what others, more experienced and influential, have either failed to do or not attempted? Difficulties seem insurmountable. Wasn't my classmate, Lieutenant Gathercoal, lost on a flight across Lake Michigan last year? That's a minute body of water compared to the Atlantic Ocean. According to the last news I had, they never found a trace of him But of course he was flying an OXX-6 engine. For reliability, you can't compare an OXX-6 with a Whirlwind.
     
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    Lambert Field lies in farming country about ten miles northwest of the St. Louis business district. A pilot, flying high above its sodded acres, sees the Missouri River in the distance, bending north and then east to spew its muddy waters into the clearer Mississippi. The city nestles vaguely in its pall of smoke, a different textured patch contrasting with fields and forests. Southward, wooded foothills step up toward the distant Ozark Mountains.
    Lambert Field is named after Major Albert Bond Lambert, who commanded a school for balloon pilots during the World War, and who is among the most active leaders in Midwestern aviation. Selected for the site of the National Air Races in 1923, it was enlarged to present size by planking over a little stream which cut through the