Lindbergh, Charles A(ugustus) (1902–1974)

Charles A Lindbergh tinkering with his plane, the Spirit of St Louis, in 1927, the year in which he made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. ‘Lindy’ became a celebrity as soon as he arrived in Paris, and was greeted as a hero on his return to the USA.

US aviator. He made the first solo nonstop flight in 33.5 hours across the Atlantic (Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York, to Le Bourget airport, Paris) in 1927 in the Spirit of St Louis, a Ryan monoplane designed by him.

Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan. He was a barnstorming pilot before attending the US Army School in Texas 1924 and becoming an officer in the Army Air Service Reserve 1925. Learning that Raymond B Orteig had offered a prize of £25,000 for the person who first made a nonstop air flight between New York and Paris, he appealed to some St Louis businessmen who agreed to finance him.

In 1930 Lindbergh's wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) became the first US woman to earn a glider pilot's licence. The same year, the couple set a transcontinental speed record of 14 hours, 45 minutes. In 1933 they flew the south Atlantic from the Gambia to Port Natal, Brazil, a distance of 3,000 km/1,860 mi, in 16 hours. Although he admired the Nazi air force and championed US neutrality in the late 1930s, he flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific in World War II. He wrote the Pulitzer prize-winning The Spirit of St Louis (1953), and his wife wrote thirteen books.

Their young son Charles Jr (1930–1932) was kidnapped and killed; ensuing legislation against kidnapping was called the Lindbergh Act.