AVIATOR’S MISTAKE

Franklin Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 140, 30 November 1938, Page 8 (Supplement)

AVIATOR’S MISTAKE

WHEN CORRIGAN LOST HIS WAY “When Douglas Corrigan, in the

confusion incident to hopping off from New York under murky skies, slightly misjudged his directions and landed at Dublin instead of Los Angeles, he touched a cord in the American heart that had not vibrated even to the potent stimulus of Hughes, or Lindberg. The popular response was not greater, but different,” says the Christian Century, of Chicago. “There was in it less of respectful admiration merging into awe, and more of affection mingled with amusement,” adds the Christian Century. “On second thought, there is plenty of ground for admiration at the superb craftsmanship and artistry of the exploit. But before one gets around to that one must chuckle a bit at the apparent casualness of it.

“A young fellow pours 69 dollars’ worth of gas and oil into a nine-year-old plane with no instruments worth mentioning, pins up before him a map that might have been torn out of a geography, puts a couple of chocolate bars in his pocket, and blithely hops from New York to Dublin.

“One of the stock stories about Lindberg tells how he carried a few letters of introduction with him so that lie would not be entirely without friends in Europe, little suspecting that half of Paris would be waiting for him at La Bourget.

“His first words when he landed were, “I am Charles Lindberg.” Corrigan arrived so casually that he not only had to tell them who lie was and where be had come from,:but had to prove it. They weren't expecting him. How could they be, when he thought lie was going to Los Angeles? He just dropped in, accidentally, so to speak.

“Both the self-reliance and the apparent nonchalance with which the exploit was accomplished appeal strongly to the human sympathies and the sporting blood of the masses of our people. They admire scientific efficiency and they want aviation to he as safe as the best equipment and the co-operative efforts of all the experts can make it. But. they are not quite satisfied to see the air become another domain reserved exclusively for exploitation by big business.

“They admire the man who, able to buy two hundred thousand dollar planes and discard one of them, equip them with every device for flight and navigation, assemble a crew of trained specialists, and provide for ground service to meet every conceivable emergency on the flying fields fo three continents. demonstrates that a flight round the world can he reduced to something like a trip by rail from New York to San Francisco in respect to Infill time and safety.

“Bui when a young mechanic simply licks his superannuated air buggy into shape and flies across I lie world’s worst ocean before anyone can stop him the world takes him to ifs heart. His exploit was more than a spectacular and crazy stunt. It was a kind of declaration of independence in the name and for the benefit of the kind of the people who do not have seventeen million dollars. “II served nolice that the air belongs to those who can fly at least as much as lo those who can buy. It

showed that, even in such a highly specialised field of endeavour as aviation, the one man expedition still has a chance of success —if the one man is competent. “We are exhilarated by this fresh demonstration that a good workman is more important than his tools. Even those of us who know our limitations too well to attempt to fly the Atlantic practically under our own power find our hearts strangely warmed by the spectacle of one who does it as they are by the sight of a frecklefaced boy capturing with a willow pole and. a string and' a worm the elusive fell that are sought by anglers whose kits contain everything that money can buy. • “One recalls too that, something like 25 years ago when several highly organised expeditions with safaris' and all that sort of thing had tried to cross Alrica from Cairo to the Cape, and none had ever succeeded, a couple of Oxford students on vacation went down and casually strolled across the continent from north to south with no more equipment than they could carry in their knapsacks. One of them, if we remember rightly, was a yeung Irishman named Tyrrell.

"Romance lives again in the courageous adventure of one man, illequipped but splendidly competent, against three thousand miles of sea and fog—especially when he can coi’ry it off with such engaging simplicity and so gay an air.”