Spirit of St. Louis
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- This article is about an aircraft. See The Spirit of St. Louis (disambiguation) for similarly named things.
The Spirit of St. Louis is the airplane used by Charles Lindbergh to make the first single-handed, non-stop trans-Atlantic flight on May 20 and May 21, 1927.
Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt airfield in Long Island, New York and had a successful touchdown at the Le Bourget Aerodrome in Paris, France. The flight lasted for 33 hours, 30 minutes and 29.8 seconds.
Also known as the Ryan NYP, it is a custom design by Donald Hall of Ryan Airlines based on the Ryan M-2. Although designed for its successful New York to Paris flight and built in San Diego, it was named after St. Louis because of financial backing from that city. The flight was inspired by and won the $25,000 Orteig Prize.
The Spirit of St. Louis is currently on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Some duplicates also exist, such as one at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. The airport also had Lindbergh's original Curtiss JN-4D "Jenny", which miraculously survived a fire in a downtown Minneapolis high-rise in 1982. It's now at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island in New York.
Spirit_of_St._Louis2.jpg
External links
- The Spirit of St. Louis (http://www.charleslindbergh.com/plane/index.asp)
- Lindbergh's Transatlantic Flight: New York to Paris Timeline, May 20-21, 1927 (http://www.charleslindbergh.com/history/timeline.asp)
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