In the peacetime years that followed World Alar One,“ Lucky Lindy” was a nickname earned by six-foot-four Charles“ Slim’’ Lindbergh, Jr. long before his famed, daring solo flight in May 1927 across the Atlantic Ocean in the“ Spirit of St. Louis.” In the two and half years before his courageous Atlantic air crossing, he parachuted to safety four times in harrowing emergency situations, once as an army student pilot, again as a test pilot, and twice as a contract pilot for the U. S. Air Mail Service, earning him the“ Lucky Lindy.” Even before the days of flying the mail, Lindbergh had been a barnstorming wing walker and exhibition parachutist. Because of those daring aviation activities, he had also been given another nickname by the press—“ The Flying Fool”— but he resented that sobriquet. After his thirtythree-hour solo transatlantic flight from Long Island, New York to Paris, France, a large group of reporters were interviewing him when an American reporter asked“ Don’ t you resent being called
the‘ Flying Fool?’” He hastily answered,“ I certainly do resent it. I take no foolish risks and study out everything I do in the air I don’ t think I am a flying fool.” Enamored with Flying Lindbergh saw his first airplane near Washington, D. C. in 1912 and became fascinated with flying. However, he wrote,“ Up to the time I enrolled in a flying school in 1922 I had never been near enough to a plane to touch it.” He made a go at college studies, leaving his Little Falls, Minnesota home to enter the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. After starting his third semester at Wisconsin Lindbergh decided into study aeronautics in earnest, and if, after becoming better acquainted with the subject, and it appeared to have a good future, I intended to take it up as a life work.” He stuck with his studies until completing half his sophomore year, then headed for Lincoln, Nebraska, reaching there by rail on the first of April and enrolling as a flying student with the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation, at a cost of $ 500. On April 9, 1922 only five years and several months before making his historic, adventurous ocean-crossing flight young, Lindbergh had his first flight as a passenger, in a Lincoln Standard aircraft. A few days later, he began his flight instruction in the same plane.
There was no ground school as part of training, so Slim a nickname he didn’ t mind simply got here-and-there, nowand-then flight training as he worked at the aircraft factory. After some seven weeks of factory work and about eight hours of dual instruction( and some $ 150 for personal expenses), his instructor declared the eager student ready to solo in mid-May. However, Lindbergh could not come up with a $ 500 cash bond required by the factory president, who worried that the plane would be expensively damaged by the novice flyer. It would take many weeks of working at the factory for $ 15 a week before Lindbergh could save the bond money. Then Lindbergh’ s instruction plane was sold. Luckily, the young new pilot made a deal with the new owner that he would pay his own expenses in return for being the plane’ s mechanic and the owner’ s helper. They went on a barnstorming tour of southeast Nebraska and Lindbergh got his first practical experience in cross-country flying-and in wing-walking, which he never really enjoyed doing, but nonetheless continued to wing-walk for some time. Soon after Slim learned to pilot a plane though still not having soloed and had started wing-walking, he had night dreams about his flying. Dreams became occasional
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