50 Years Later, Corrigan in Right-Way Hop to Ireland

Douglas (Wrong Way) Corrigan, going the right way this time, returned today to the airfield where he landed his small plane 50 years ago after leaving New York on a flight to California.

“Look, no hands!” the 81-year-old American declared, arms aloft in a triumphant gesture, as the commuter plane carrying him from Dublin landed at Baldonnel Airport. Corrigan wore the same leather flying jacket he had on when he landed here the first time.

An army band, a Cabinet minister and the U.S. ambassador greeted him, along with R. W. Sullivan, the aircraft engineer who met him on the first trip.

He came to Ireland by commercial jet for festivities celebrating his famous wrong-way flight, then joined the pilot in the cockpit of a propeller plane renamed “WW2”--or Wrong Way 2--for the 10-minute flight to Baldonnel.

Misread Compass

Corrigan has always said he misread his compass, headed east by mistake, and did not know until his $900 Curtiss-Robin monoplane pierced the clouds 28 hours later that he was over Ireland. He had sought permission to fly the Atlantic, but was refused because the plane, carrying 330 gallons of gasoline and five gallons of oil, was deemed too heavy to be safe over the ocean.

Before leaving the United States for his first trip to Ireland since, the Texas-born pilot hinted his story might change, but he stuck to it at the initial ceremony.

“I followed the wrong end of the compass needle,” he told admirers at Baldonnel Airport. “It’s a simple thing to happen. It shouldn’t have happened. I was the first one to admit that I had made a mistake and I was willing to correct it.”

He recalled that the runway at Baldonnel, now Irish air force headquarters, was a grass strip the last time he landed there.

“I taxied up to a little shack where there were two men in uniform,” Corrigan said. “I was in trouble until they found out what my name was and the policeman said, ‘He’s just another Irishman coming home.’ ”