Lindbergh landed here

The third week of May marks the 96th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s legendary solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. This year, 2023, also marks the 100th anniversary of the not so famed flight where Lindbergh crash landed his airplane in Linn County between Cedar Rapids and Center Point.

No, not the iconic Ryan “Spirit of St. Louis” which triumphantly set down in Paris after a harrowing 33-and-a-half hour flight, but the first aircraft he ever owned, an Army surplus wood and fabric biplane built by Glenn Curtiss and known as the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny.

Charles Lindbergh was born Feb. 4, 1902 and raised in Little Falls, MN and Detroit. His father, Charles Sr., was a congressman from the 6th District of Minnesota during the early 20th century, but failed to be reelected for a sixth term because of his opposition to U.S. entry into World War I.

His son attended two years of classes at the University of Wisconsin, but dropped out because he desired more hands-on learning than through textbooks. Seeking what he saw as a glamorous career in which he could put his ambition and natural propensity for engineering to good use, he enrolled in flight school with the Nebraska Aviation Company at Lincoln and received his pilot’s license in March of 1922.

With the World War I having just ended a little over three years before, Lindbergh immediately purchased a used JN-4 Jenny training and observation aircraft that had been retired from the Army Signal Corps. He began flying a circuit throughout the Midwest as a barnstormer performing stunts in the air and offering rides from farm fields and small cities in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, and much of the region.

On one such journey, in late summer of 1923, he was attempting to navigate for a landing at Cedar Rapids in route to an exhibition at Oelwein. Fog and clouds covered much of the area, however, and flying at treetop level was too risky, so with few landmarks to serve as a visual reference guiding him to a landing strip, he continued on but found no appropriate place to set down. Finally, the engine started to sputter, coughed for the last drop of fuel, and went silent. The plane descended sharply, then in a controlled crash landing, struck a farm field outside of today’s Robins, Iowa.

Lindbergh survived the landing without a scratch, inspected the fabric, bracing wires, and wooden frame of the crippled Jenny and found only minor, easily repairable, damage, then walked to a farmer’s house to find where he could acquire some gas for the motor.

As he filled the fuel tank, the fog lifted and the skies cleared enough for navigating by sight. By that evening, he and an aspiring pilot, 17-year-old student, Francis Stimson, took off safely for Oelwein. Unfortunately, with the student at the controls, the plane landed hard on arrival at Oelwein, breaking a strut and damaging the engine. The fuselage was left in the field and the motor detached and abandoned in a barn.

Lindbergh, minus a plane of his own, enlisted with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where, given the primitive technology of the aircraft and the inherent danger with it, only 19 out of the 104 cadets earned their pilot’s wings (Lindbergh, himself, had to bail out on one occasion when a fellow pilot collided with his plane in mid air and was saved by the relatively new invention of the parachute).

Once rated a pilot, the shaken but determined aviator was assigned to an aerial squadron attached to the Missouri National Guard and reported to St. Louis for duty. While there, the young lieutenant met airline owner, William Robertson, who hired him to fly airmail from the Gateway City to Chicago.

His success at flying that link in the national airmail system convinced him that he should attempt to cross the Atlantic, which he did from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York to Paris May 20-21, 1927.

Meanwhile, the Jenny biplane had been sold multiple times, including to a farmer in rural Sumner, Iowa. The motor, having been removed, was sold separately. The most recent private owner of the plane was an Army gunnery sergeant from Coggon who, in 1973, sold it to a flying club on Long Island, near the site where Lindbergh began his trans-Atlantic flight.

Shortly before his diagnosis with cancer, Lindbergh verified that one of the struts on the wing was the custom built makeshift part he had installed after the 1923 crash in Iowa, confirming the aircraft to have been his. Thoroughly restored to pristine condition by a member of the flying club, Lindbergh’s “Iowa” Jenny today hangs proudly on display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, New York.

The engine, however, is much closer to home. It was purchased by a farmer near Central City who later turned it over to the curator of a music machine museum in McGregor. When the museum fell on hard times, the motor was bought by Alexander Jordan, the builder of the House on the Rock, where the petite OX-5 engine serves as a centerpiece outside the Tribute to Nostalgia Gallery in the Dodgeville, WI tourist attraction.

The plane and engine are permanent figures in two very prestigious historical institutions, however a local museum of its own distinction is conducting a special event to recognize the 100th anniversary of Lindbergh’s crash landing in Linn County.

The Center Point Historical Society will host a day commemorating Lindbergh, and the surprising number of Iowans who tried to be the first to fly across the Atlantic, as part of dedication ceremonies for a new exhibit titled “Lindbergh Landed Here.”

The display includes rare vintage photographs from throughout Lindbergh’s esteemed aviation career, artifacts from the Lindbergh family’s legacy, and a five foot model of the Curtiss Jenny, like that he courageously landed between Cedar Rapids and Center Point.

The event begins at 2 p.m. on Sunday May 21 at the museum, 700 Washington Street, in Center Point. Admission is free.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.