Monday, December 1, 2008
(Photo: Charles Lindbergh flying his glider over the Tehachapi Mountains in 1930 by smithvester, all rights reserved.)
Aviator Charles Lindbergh – "Lucky Lindy" - spent a few weeks on the Monterey Peninsula in March 1930, three years after his historic solo flight across the Atlantic. He was here to experiment with a motor-less glider, and tried to launch it almost daily from a hill south of Carmel Highlands. The world was watching, but the usual Pacific winds didn't materialize. The first day's flight could last only a few minutes. The longest – an hour and 10 minutes, according to a New York Times report – ended with an emergency landing after an aileron control fell off a wing. Lindbergh kept trying, but without enough wind sometimes had to land on the nearby roadway, the weekly newspaper High Tide reported. According to that local paper, Lindy and his new wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, stayed at the Del Monte Lodge in Pebble Beach, and the famous aviator played a lot of polo while waiting for winds. He fell off his pony on one occasion.