Fly 'n Things

I owned the world that hour as I rode over it …
free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds,
but how inseparably I was bound to them.”
Charles A. Lindberg

On May 21, 1927 almost seventy five years ago, Charles A Lindberg, a quiet young airmail pilot from Minnesota made history when he landed his monoplane at the Paris’ Le Bourget airfield. Lindberg was inspired when he first learned of the $25,000 Orteig reward for the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris.  The Orteig Prize had been offered by Raymond Orteig, a New York hotel business man, since 1919.

A small aircraft company in San Diego, Ryan Airlines, agreed to build him an aircraft. The aircraft, Ryan NYP, was later christened “The Spirit of St. Louis”, in honor of Lindbergh’s friends and associates in Missouri who financed the flight. The flight spanned 3,610…