One Summer: America, 1927

Lindbergh took a train to New York for a meeting with Charles Levine, owner of the aeroplane Columbia . This was the same plane that would, two months later, set the world endurance record with Chamberlin and Acosta. Chamberlin was present at the February meeting, as was the plane’s brilliant, sweet-tempered designer, Giuseppe Bellanca, though neither said much.
    They met in Levine’s office in the Woolworth Building in Manhattan. Levine listened to Lindbergh’s pitch, then agreed to sell the plane to him for $15,000 – rather a startling thing to do since Chamberlin was, up to that moment, expecting to fly the plane to Paris himself. It was also a very good price for what was unquestionably one of the best planes in the world and the only one capable oftaking Lindbergh to Europe alone. Understandably elated, Lindbergh travelled back to St Louis to draw a cheque and confirm the support of his backers, then returned at once to New York to complete the transaction. On the return visit, as Lindbergh handed over a cashier’s cheque for the full amount of the purchase, Levine casually mentioned that although they were happy to proceed with the deal as agreed, they of course reserved the right to choose the crew.
    Lindbergh could not have been more taken aback. The proposition was ludicrous. He was hardly going to buy a plane so that a pilot of Levine’s choosing could make the flight and receive all the glory. Lindbergh had just discovered, as many others did before and after him, that where business was concerned Charles A. Levine had a genius for causing dismay. Almost everyone who dealt with Levine found reasons to distrust and despise him. Bellanca himself would terminate their relationship before June was out. Lindbergh took back his cheque and dolefully made the long, clacketing trip back to St Louis.
    Lindbergh could now hardly be in a less promising situation. In desperation he cabled a tiny company in San Diego, Ryan Airlines, and asked if it could build a plane for an Atlantic flight, and, if so, how much it would cost and how long it would take. The reply came quickly and was unexpectedly heartening. Ryan could build the plane in sixty days for $6,000, plus the expense of the engine, which it would install at cost. Ryan, it turned out, needed the work as much as Lindbergh needed the plane.
    On 23 February, slightly less than three weeks after his twenty-fifth birthday and three months before he would fly to Paris, Lindbergh arrived at the factory of Ryan Airlines in San Diego. There he met the president, B. F. Mahoney, and chief engineer, Donald Hall, both only slightly older than he was. Though the company was called Ryan, Ryan had sold out to Mahoney a few weeks earlier – so recently in fact that they hadn’t had time to change the company name. Donald Hall had also joined the company only amonth before, a truly fortunate break for Lindbergh because Hall was a gifted and diligent designer – exactly what Lindbergh needed.
    Over the next two months the entire Ryan workforce – thirty-five people – laboured flat out on Lindbergh’s plane. Hall worked to the point of exhaustion – for thirty-six hours straight at one point. The plane could not have been built so swiftly otherwise, but then the Ryan employees had every reason to work hard. Ryan had no orders and was on the verge of bankruptcy when Lindbergh arrived. It is hard to imagine what the employees thought of this lanky youth from the Midwest hovering over them, questioning their every move in a manner bound to try patience. Lindbergh and Hall, however, got along extremely well, which was the main thing.
    The Spirit of St Louis was based on an existing model, the Ryan M-2, but many adjustments were necessary to make a plane suitable for an ocean flight. The inordinately heavy fuel load meant Hall had to redesign the wings, fuselage, landing gear and ailerons, all major jobs. Of necessity, much of what they did was based on improvisation and guesswork – sometimes to a startling degree. Realizing they had no clear notion of how far it was from New York to Paris by the most direct route, they went to a public library and measured the distance on a globe with a piece of string. By such means was one of history’s greatest planes built.
    Lindbergh didn’t want to be sandwiched between the engine and fuel tank – too many pilots had been crushed in forced landings that way – so the main tank was put at the front of the plane, where the