Spirit of St. Louis
The Spirit of St. Louis was the plane Charles Lindbergh, with whom he crossed the Atlantic on 20 May 1927.
The aircraft was a conversion of the Ryan M-2 by Ryan Airlines and was built in San Diego. It was a shoulder-wing monoplane made of tubular steel and wood, which was covered with fabric. Unlike most aircraft of Lindbergh's competitors had only one engine with 166 kW ( 223 hp). Lindbergh was of the opinion could at an extremely fully loaded multi-engine machine with an engine fails, the other motors, the machine can not keep in the air, but the risk of engine failure increases with the number of motors.
Starting point was the Roosevelt Field in New York and after a flight distance of 5808.50 km ( 3610 miles ), he landed on May 21, after 33 hours and 30 minutes on the Le Bourget Airport in Paris. Thus Lindbergh won the advertised by the hotel owner Raymond Orteig price of $ 25,000 for the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris. The choice of name to Spirit of St. Louis is the thanks to private funders of this project, who came from St. Louis. The official name of the aircraft is also preceded by the acronym NYP, the mission of the New York-Paris flight.
The main tank was installed in front of the cockpit, so that Lindbergh could see only a small periscope forward, because he did not want to be trapped in a crash landing between the engine and tank. In addition, thus the heavy tank was low about the center of gravity of the aircraft. Overall, the Spirit of St. Louis soak up 1,705 liters of fuel, which accounted for more than half of the total weight of 2330 kg. The theoretical range was 4000 miles.
All the aircraft was designed for low air resistance, especially on low weight. Therefore, it was also omitted some instruments such as fuel gauge, or radio. Lindbergh knew the consumption of the engine per hour and the contents of each tank. Therefore, he needed no fuel gauge, but he turned in flight to a specific timetable between the tank back and forth to keep the aircraft in trim and not unilateral load.
Lindbergh was involved in the design of the aircraft and also supervised the construction itself.
After the successful transatlantic flight several serious damage was discovered in Paris, such as large cracks in the fabric as well as a 20 cm long hole in the tank.
The aircraft now hangs as one of the exhibits at the Washington National Air and Space Museum at the entrance to the ceiling.