The Spirit of St. Louis
The Spirit of St. Louis is the specially built, single-engine, a single-seat airplane that was flown by Charles Lindbergh in 1927, in a record-breaking first-ever first nonstop flight from New York to Paris. The Spirit of St. Louis flew a distance of approximately 3,600 miles (5,800 km) in just over 33 hours to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize for the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris.
Lindbergh’s flight made him an instant celebrity and media star who ignited the public’s imagination. He wrote: “I was astonished at the effect of my successful landing in France had on the nations of the world. It was like a match lighting a bonfire.” On his return to the US, Lindbergh and the “Spirit” were escorted up the Potomac River to Washington, D.C., by a fleet of warships and flights of military aircraft. President Coolidge presented the 25-year-old U.S. Army Reserve aviator with the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The US Postal Service commemorated the world event by releasing a 10c US Airmail stamp honoring Lindbergh and the “Spirit of St Louis” in 1927. The “Spirit of St. Louis” is now on permanent display in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
The Spirit of St. Louis
- Title: The Spirit of St. Louis
- Role: Long-range aircraft for the record attempt
- Produced: 1927
- Owner: Charles Lindbergh
- Museum: National Air and Space Museum
Tour of the National Air and Space Museum
- The Spirit of St. Louis
- Apollo 11 Command Module
- The Wright Flyer
- Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis
- SpaceShipOne
- Apollo Lunar Module
- Skylab 4 Apollo Command Module
- Airbus A320 Simulated Cockpit
A Tour of Air and Space Museums
- National Air and Space Museum
- Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum
- Aviation Museum Hannover-Laatzen
- Royal Air Force Museum London
- Australian Aviation Heritage Centre
Science and Technology Museums
- Science Museum, London
- Queensland Museum & Science Centre
- National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo
- ArtScience Museum, Singapore
- Shanghai Science and Technology Museum
- Great Lakes Science Center, Cleveland
- Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum, New York
- National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC
- National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo
- Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago)
- Science and Technology Museums
- Royal Observatory, Greenwich
Military and War Museums and Memorials
- Imperial War Museum, London
- Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum, New York
- Australian War Memorial
- Darwin Military Museum, Australia
- Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne, Australia
- Changi Museum, Singapore
- War Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece
- Churchill War Rooms, London
- Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, New Zealand
- Household Cavalry Museum, London
- National Army Museum, London
- MacArthur Museum Brisbane
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“The Spirit of St. Louis is a wonderful plane. It’s like a living creature, gliding along smoothly, happily, as though a successful flight means as much to it as to me, as though we shared our experiences together, each feeling beauty, life, and death as keenly, each dependent on the other’s loyalty.”
– Charles Lindbergh
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Photo Credit: 1) By Ad Meskens, zie ook:vliegtuigen [Copyrighted free use, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
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