‘Lindbergh Flies Again’: Now, That’s the Spirit

Early in “Lindbergh Flies Again,” the History Channel documentary on the 75th anniversary of the historic transatlantic flight, Lindbergh biographer A. Scott Berg explains how astounded the public was at what the daredevil pilot from Minnesota had done.

The modern equivalent to Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris, Berg says, would be to fly from the Earth to the moon--in a craft you helped build with money you scraped together from donations.

“Imagine Neil Armstrong raising the money to build the rocket to go to the moon,” Berg says. “That’s what Charles Lindbergh did.”

Imagine indeed. Anniversary or no, the Lindbergh story is an oft-told American tale, and rightly so.

“Flies Again” is a first-rate account of the daunting challenges that faced Lindbergh--who was 25 but, as the narrator points out, looked 19--when he dared to try to win a $25,000 prize for making the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris.

Even Lindbergh buffs will find some nuggets here. Like this: During his two years as an airmail pilot flying the St. Louis-to-Chicago route, 31 of Lindbergh’s fellow pilots died in crashes. Thirty-one of 40.

The production is helped enormously by historic film footage and new interviews with people who saw the Spirit of St. Louis depart from Roosevelt Field in New York or land 331/2 hours later at Le Bourget Aerodrome in Paris.

As “Flies Again” notes, the spirit or, more accurately, the money, may have come from St. Louis but the grit and know-how to build the plane came from a ragtag outfit in San Diego called Ryan Aircraft.

Only a bunch of financially struggling dreamers could figure they could accomplish for $10,000 what larger companies were trying and failing to do for other competitors at 10 times that amount.

The last surviving employee from those two furious months at Ryan is Georgia Borthwick, who was a 19-year-old office worker. Her recollection of the shy, repressed youth who talked her into a flight over San Diego before he left for St. Louis and immortality is one of the gems of “Lindbergh Flies Again.”

Borthwick notes there was doubt even at Ryan that the plane would lift off, particularly from a soggy, rutted runway.

“The most exciting thing was that he got into the air,” says Borthwick with a joy undiminished by decades.

(In the blown-up picture of Lindbergh and the Ryan workers that adorns an entire wall at the San Diego Aerospace Museum, Borthwick is the sassy-looking brunet standing directly in front of Lindbergh.)

Framing “Flies Again” is the recent flight of Erik Lindbergh, 37, a Lindbergh grandson. In a state-of-the-art single-engine private plane, Erik retraced his grandfather’s flight in half the time and with twice the food (six sandwiches compared to Lindy’s famous three).

To compare the two flights, of course, is an enormous stretch. To trim weight, Charles Lindbergh dared not take a radio or sextant; Erik’s plane had a global positioning system, e-mail-capable computer and a satellite phone, and he was in nearly constant communication with mission control in St. Louis.

Still, the effort was on behalf of two worthwhile causes: getting schoolchildren interested in the legacy of the 1927 flight and promoting a contest by the St. Louis-based X Prize Foundation that is offering a $10-million prize for the first privately funded space flight.

Although “Flies Again” tends to hype the dangers of the over-the-water flight, Erik has a good bit of the Lindbergh charm and it’s impossible not to root for him. Interestingly, his family was dubious.

“We knew that there would be familial angst, reservations and even downright adamant ‘you shouldn’t do this,’ ” said Erik’s wife, Mara.

Some things never change. Risk-takers make for difficult relatives.

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“Lindbergh Flies Again” airs Monday, 9-11 p.m., on the History Channel.