Charles Lindbergh's Supernatural Experience

Charles Lindberg

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974), nicknamed Slim, Lucky Lindy, and The Lone Eagle, was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.
As a 25-year-old U.S. Air Mail pilot, Lindbergh emerged suddenly from virtual obscurity to instantaneous world fame as the result of his Orteig Prize-winning solo non-stop flight on May 20–21, 1927, made from Roosevelt Field located in Garden City on New York's Long Island to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France, a distance of nearly 3,600 statute miles (5,800 km), in the single-seat, single-engine purpose built Ryan monoplane Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh, a U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve officer, was also awarded the nation's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his historic exploit.
Early years

Charles Lindberg in 1927

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4, 1902, but spent most of his childhood in Little Falls, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C. He was the only child of Swedish immigrant Charles August Lindbergh (birth name Carl Månsson) (1859–1924), and Evangeline Lodge Lindbergh (1876–1954), of Detroit. The Lindberghs separated in 1909. Lindbergh, Sr. was a U.S. Congressman (R-Minnesota (6th)) from 1907 to 1917 who gained notoriety when he opposed the entry of the U.S. into World War I. Mrs. Lindbergh was a chemistry teacher at Cass Technical High School in Detroit and later at Little Falls High School, from which Charles graduated in 1918. Lindbergh also attended over a dozen other schools from Washington, D.C., to California during his childhood and teenage years (none for more than a full year) including the Force School and Sidwell Friends School while living in Washington, D.C., with his father, and Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, California. Lindbergh enrolled in the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the Fall of 1920, but dropped out in the middle of his sophomore year and headed for Lincoln, Nebraska, in March 1922 to begin flight training.

Orteig Prize:Flight to Paris

Lindberg with his Spirit of Louis

Six well known aviators had thus already lost their lives in pursuit of the Orteig Prize when Lindbergh took off on his successful attempt in the early morning of Friday, May 20, 1927. Dubbed the Spirit of St. Louis, his "partner" was a fabric covered, single-seat, single-engine "Ryan NYP" high-wing monoplane (CAB registration: N-X-211) designed by Donald Hall and custom built by B.F. Mahoney's Ryan Aircraft Company of San Diego, California. The primary source of funding for the purchase of the "Spirit of Louis"(His AirPlane) and other expenses related to the overall New York to Paris effort came from a $15,000 State National Bank of St. Louis loan made on February 18, 1927, to St. Louis businessmen Harry H. Knight and Harold M. Bixby, the project's two principal trustees,and another $1,000 donated by Frank Robertson of RAC on the same day. Lindbergh himself also personally contributed $2,000 of his own money from both his savings and his earnings from the 10 months that he flew the U.S. Air Mail for RAC.

Lindberg Receiving the Price

Burdened by its heavy load of 450 U.S. gallons (1,704 liters) of gasoline weighing approximately 2,710 lbs (1,230 kg), and hampered by a muddy, rain soaked runway, Lindbergh's Wright Whirlwind powered monoplane gained speed very slowly as it made its 7:52 AM takeoff run from Roosevelt Field, but its J-5C radial engine still proved powerful enough to allow the Spirit to clear the telephone lines at the far end of the field "by about twenty feet with a fair reserve of flying speed." Over the next 33.5 hours he and the "Spirit"—which Lindbergh always jointly referred to simply as "WE"—faced many challenges including skimming over both storm clouds at 10,000 feet (3,000 m) and wave tops at as low at 10 ft (3.0 m), fighting icing, flying blind through fog for several hours, and navigating only by the stars (whenever visible) and "dead reckoning" before landing at Le Bourget Airport at 10:22 PM on Saturday, May 21. A crowd estimated at 150,000 spectators stormed the field, dragged Lindbergh out of the cockpit, and literally carried him around above their heads for "nearly half an hour." While some damage was done to the Spirit (especially to the fabric covering on the fuselage) by souvenir hunters, both Lindbergh and the Spirit were eventually "rescued" from the mob by a group of French military fliers, soldiers, and police who took them both to safety in a nearby hangar.From that moment on, however, life would never again be the same for the previously little known former U.S. Air Mail pilot who, by his successful flight, had just achieved virtually instantaneous—and lifelong—world fame.

Element of Mystery
As the time passed onto the flight, Lindbergh started to develop a feeling that he was not alone. He reported of seeing , in the fog, behind him, saw human forms, friendly, transparent and weightless.

As per Lindbergh he didn’t feel afraid. In his book, The Spirit of St Louis, he describes his experience as if it were happening all over again: “Without turning my head, I see them as clearly as though in my normal field of vision. There’s no limit to my sight—my skull is one great eye, seeing everywhere at once."

Statue to honour
 Lindberg

“These phantoms speak with human voices—friendly, vaporlike shapes, without substance, able to vanish or appear at will, to pass in and out through the walls of the fuselage as though no walls were there. Now, many are crowded behind me. Now, only a few remain. First one and then another presses forward to my shoulder to speak above the engine’s noise, and then draws back among the group behind. At times, voices come out of the air itself, clear yet far away, traveling through distances that can’t be measured by the scale of human miles, familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.”

It was almost 26 years later that Lindbergh first acknowledged his vision of the Angels(though he did not term them Angels).

Sources:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh#Pursuing_the_Orteig_Prize
               http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Angels/2002/10/Charles-Lindberghs-Angels.aspx