Dorothy S. Cochrane
On May 27, 1929, Anne Spencer Morrow, the shy, scholarly daughter of a banker, became the wife of the most famous aviator in the world, Charles A. Lindbergh. By 1934, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was routinely touted as the “First Lady of Aviation,” an accolade that acknowledged not only her companionship during her husband’s flights but also her own surprising but very real flying accomplishments. The transformation from a young woman with a crush on the world’s first media star to a fully accredited pilot and navigator ultimately rewarded Anne and Charles Lindbergh with the most private and satisfying moments of their married life. For the public, this evolution resulted in a confident writer who provided luminous literary glimpses of aviation during the Golden Age of Flight.
Lindbergh took her first airplane ride with the “hero” on December 26, 1927, five days after meeting him. Initially suspicious of his status, his personality and the joy of flight won her over; their courtship was conducted in the air. Shortly after their marriage, she became the first woman in the U.S. to earn a glider pilot’s license. In 1930, she served as navigator, while seven months pregnant, when her husband set a new transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to Roosevelt Field, New York. By 1931, she had earned her private pilot’s license and owned her own airplane, a Brunner Winkle Bird.
Their most famous flights together were two exploratory surveys for potential air routes, sponsored by Pan American Airways: the 1931 Great Circle survey through Northern Canada, Alaska, and the Far East and the 1933 North Atlantic/European/South Atlantic survey flight, both accomplished in their custom-built Lockheed Sirius. These flights, during which Anne Lindbergh provided expert communications, navigation, and copiloting, resulted in development of air routes still used in commercial aviation today. For her part, Lindbergh received the U.S. Flag Association Cross of Honor and she became the first woman to receive the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Gold Medal.
Beyond the technical aspects of their flights were the huge literary impacts of her articles for National Geographic Magazine and two books, North to the Orient and Listen the Wind. With the exception of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, perhaps no one else captured and revealed the essence and thrill of flight like Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Sinclair Lewis pronounced North to the Orient as “one of the most beautiful and great-hearted books that have ever been written.”
This paper will discuss the Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s accomplishments in aviation through several perspectives: as Charles Lindbergh’s wife and copilot, as a pioneering female aviator of the 1930s, as a role model, and as a writer. The paper will rely on source material from the Lindbergh Collections at the National Air and Space Museum, the Lindbergh Collection at Yale University, and Lindbergh’s own publications.