True or not, he just kept going and landed at Baldonnel airfield, outside Dublin, 28 hours and 13 minutes later on 18 July All he had on board were two chocolate bars, two boxes of fig bars and a quart of water; he had no radio, his compass was decades old, and the extra fuel tanks meant that he could only see out of the sides of the plane—but he had made it.
Fame and fortune quickly followed. Tragedy touched his life in when one of his sons died, ironically, in a plane crash. Nevertheless, in he joined in the golden anniversary celebrations, allowing enthusiasts to retrieve the famous Curtiss Robin plane from his garage. Sunshine was still airworthy, and Corrigan was so enthusiastic that the organisers considered attaching the tail to a police car in case this senior citizen decided to relive his glory days!
And Lindbergh decided to have Ryan build Spirit of St. Ryan workers were ecstatic to learn that Lindbergh had succeeded in flying from New York to Paris in May , but Corrigan was more than that—he was inspired. During the two months it took to construct the aircraft, designated the NYP by Ryan, Corrigan and the rest of the crew often worked well past midnight.
Corrigan himself assembled the wing and installed the gas tanks and the instrument panel. Lindbergh also spent a considerable amount of time at the factory, supervising the construction. Corrigan later recalled that everyone at Ryan Aeronautical seemed motivated by Lindbergh and his goal. Louis from San Diego to St. Louis in May , and then to New York City. From there, of course, he set off for Paris.
Corrigan and his co-workers went wild when the news reached San Diego that Lindbergh had made it to Paris. The workmen jumped into their cars and drove through the streets of the city, shouting like madmen. But Douglas Corrigan was more than ecstatic—he was inspired. He decided then and there that he wanted to fly across the ocean.
Ryan Aeronautical had built what was now the most famous plane in the world, and all of a sudden business was booming. The factory moved to St. Louis in October , but Corrigan stayed in California and got a job as a mechanic for a new flying operation called the Airtech School, run by the San Diego Air Service. Once it got started, the Airtech School was busy with more than 50 students in training each day. The only chance Corrigan got to fly was on his lunch hour. He loved doing stunts, especially chandelles—steep, climbing turns—that he would start as soon as the plane was off the ground.
Corrigan would often do 10 or 11 chandelles in a row. The company pilot thought he was crazy; when Corrigan stepped out of the plane, the other flier would read him the riot act.
Corrigan would just look surprised. But the company pilot won out, and Corrigan was forbidden to do stunts in the company planes. Corrigan subsequently stopped stunting near the airfield. Instead, he flew down to a small field near the Mexican border and did stunts there. Corrigan went to New York with a friend in , working at Roosevelt Field for a while and barnstorming along the East Coast.
He and his partner would land near a small town and talk people into buying airplane rides. He started out for the West Coast a few days after buying the plane. He would stop every miles or so and pick up passengers when he could find them, in order to make a little money while he was traveling. Corrigan bought his used Curtiss Robin for a song. His makeshift improvements would finally reward him during his solo flight from New York to Ireland. HistoryNet Archives. Once, when he was running low on gas, he passed over several towns without finding a field that looked good enough for a landing.
He finally came down in a field that was overgrown with brush. It was a rough landing—one of the wheels hit a tree stump, damaging the landing gear. Luckily, there was a farmyard nearby. Corrigan walked over, found a few pieces of wood and cut some wire off a fence—all he needed for some quick repairs.
Corrigan returned to San Diego and worked in an aircraft factory for a while, but that did not satisfy his zest for adventure. He decided to refurbish his Curtiss Robin and pursue his dream of flying across the Atlantic.
He knew that attempting such a flight might kill him—but he was sure it certainly would not be boring. Since he was Irish American, Corrigan naturally chose Dublin as his destination. He bought a new engine for his plane—a Wright J with horsepower and five cylinders. He also built and installed the extra gas tanks that he would need if he were to attempt a transatlantic flight. As far as he was concerned, Douglas Corrigan was all set to be the first man to fly nonstop from New York to Dublin.
But it was not to be that simple. When a federal inspector checked out the plane, he licensed it for cross-country flights only. But Corrigan refused to give up. In , he flew to New York, stopping over at St. Louis on the way. Then he wrote to the Federal Bureau of Air Commerce, asking for permission to go ahead with the flight. For no apparent reason he was told to wait until the following year. He went back to California, got the license and installed two more gas tanks for good measure.
I left New York yesterday morning headed for California, but I got mixed up in the clouds and must have flown the wrong way. It was a likely story, and Corrigan stuck to it to the delight of everyone. He had violated enough rules and regulations to have grounded him for life, but he had so captivated the public imagination that any legal procedure would have caused a furor.
So his flying license was suspended for five days which Corrigan spent aboard an ocean liner, returning to New York for a hero's welcome. After a brief tour with his obsolescent Robin which had a Department of Commerce "X," for experimental license-and even that had been granted reluctantly to the old "flying jalopy" , after writing a book and taking a fling at the movies, Douglas Corrigan settled down to growing oranges in California.
His flight, of course, added nothing to the progress of aviation except for a little laughter in a world growing grimmer by the day. Corrigan was the last of the early glory-seeking fliers.
He'd rebuilt it and modified it for long-distance flight. Like Corrigan, it was a hold-over from earlier days. By now, Lindbergh's flight was eleven years old. Others had also flown the Atlantic, but it was still not a trick you'd try in any regular factory-ready airplane. Corrigan flew non-stop from California to New York in The booking of psychedelic rock god Jimi Hendrix with the made-for-television Monkees was the brainchild of An ammunition ship explodes while being loaded in Port Chicago, California, killing people on July 17, Poor procedures and lack of training led to the disaster.
The decisions reached at the conference ostensibly settled many of the pressing issues between the three wartime allies, but the meeting was Live TV.
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