Lindbergh: Lindy Not The Only Flier In The Family

Deb Dawson By Deb Dawson Hunterdon County Democrat
on July 23, 2008 at 3:00 PM, updated July 23, 2008 at 3:06 PM

By John Curran

With all the acclaim Charles Lindbergh earned, we sometimes forget that his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was accomplished in her own right.

Seventy-five years ago, the Democrat described a recent trip during which she had served as an invaluable navigator to her husband, having earned her "wings" during several previous adventures.

In the years after his historic 1927 flight from Roosevelt Field in New York to Paris, Col. Lindbergh had been researching and testing other possible air routes between the U.S. and Europe. He and his wife had recently flown to Denmark using Greenland and Iceland as waypoints, but the Associated Press report called it "no stunt." Rather, the pair was making a study of conditions, which would help set the transatlantic travel routes we now take for granted.

Any article about the birth of aviation mentions names that evoke images of musty leather flight jackets. The July 20, 1933 Democrat reported that Mrs. Lindbergh learned navigation skills from Harold Gatty, who flew around the world with one-eyed barnstormer Wiley Post. She had also been taught to fly by Col. Lindbergh and was a proficient radio operator, better than Lindy was himself, he said.

Mrs. Lindbergh had already worked with her husband to flesh out theories for safer and more economical flight. In April of 1930, she acted as navigator while he tested the theory that higher altitudes would allow faster speeds. From Los Angeles to New York, Mrs. Lindbergh "held the direction by means of sextant sights," helping her husband to set a record for that flight of 14 hours and 45 minutes.

Despite achievements by female aviators like Amelia Earhart and Mrs. Lindbergh, the paper did describe Lindy's wife, one of the toughest women of her age, with words that would easily fit the host of a seasonal soiree. It said that the "girl of guarded upbringing and delicate sensibilities, who expressed her dreams in wistful poetry, can 'rough it' with the Colonel wherever and whenever it may be necessary."

The article said that Col. Lindbergh had taught her the craft of camping, and that not even a forced landing in the "dreary, uninhabited northlands strikes fear into her flying heart."
She had experience with that after several mishaps during a flight to Japan and China in 1931.