kilograms 5 137 lbs was the takeoff weight of the Spirit of St Louis around 1 360 liters 359 gallons of fuel and the required oil accounted for more than half of the total weight kilometers 3 609 2 miles was the distance that Lindbergh covered from Roosevelt Field in New York to the Le Bourget airport in Paris 2 330 5 808 5 people crossed the Atlantic before Lindbergh albeit none of them did so on solo flights hours was the duration of Lindbergh s solo flight that made him a national hero A ticker tape parade was held in his honor in New York City 66 33 5 A cockpit reduced to the essentials no radio no fuel gauge and a seat like grandma s rocking chair Euphoria abounds onlookers are flooding the airfield in 1901 German American aviation pioneer Gus tave Whitehead purportedly achieves the first powered flight in human history even before the commonly known Wright brothers who take off for their epochal first motorized flight in 1903 barely two years after Lindbergh s birth In 1916 a man named William Boeing launches the pro duction of airplanes and as early as in 1919 the British pairing of John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown complete the first non stop transatlantic crossing between Newfoundland and Ireland in an aircraft That same year a Paris hotel owner named Ray mond Orteig offers a prize of 25 000 dollars for the first non stop flight between New York City and Paris sparking Lindbergh s ambition He starts studying mechanical engineering but quits after barely two years in favor of taking up train ing as a pilot and mechanic He buys a Curtiss JN 4 Jenny and travels through the United States as an aerobatic aviator Now serving in the mili tary he graduates from pilot training as best in class in 1924 and subsequently starts working as an Air Mail pilot 24

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