Biographical Book Review: Charles Lindbergh: American Hero of Flight

 The People to Know Series, Charles Lindbergh: American Hero of Flight by Virginia Meachum, Enslow Publisher's Inc., Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, 2002.

This is a very good biography and tells many things about Charles Lindbergh that I did not know.  Of course it starts with his early days, and how he got into flying.  He was working as a mail pilot when decided he could fly across the Atlantic, which we all know he did becomeing the first person to do so.  

I did not know he was such a prlific author.  He won a Pulitzer for his book Spirit of St. Louis.  His wife Anne was also an author and pubished many books.  Before WWII he took an isolationist position and struggled to keep America out of the war.  A speech he gave in this regard was considered by some to be racist.  Lindbergh did serve in whatever way he could during the war.  He was not in active combat but was allowed to fly a few missions when he was a consultant.  His knowledge of aviation was very valuable.  He taught how to get better fuel mileage from the planes.

  He worked for TWA and Pan Am in establishing plane transportation work.  For TWA it was mostly across the U.S. and for Pan Am it was international flights.  

When he was older he worked to protect the environment and was on the board of the World Wildlife Fund.  

He was also a scientist and worked on an artificial heart.

The part that makes this book difficult to read is the kidnapping and murder of his son.  Charles jr was a year and a half when he was kidnapped for ransom.  The criminal who kidnapped young Charles apparently dropped him off the ladder and he fell on his head which killed him.  He still collected the ransom.  It was good to know that the man did not have the intent of killing the baby.  Lindbergh partially blamed this on the terrible amount of publicity and lack of privacy from his life of fame.  They lived in England for a time as a result.

Charles Lindbergh in Kingman (and Amelia Earhart)

Charles Lindbergh had a prominent roll in aviation.  He was proclaimed a hero after he was the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.  He had been a ail courier and continued in this.  This was the early  t days of airmail.  Clement Melville Keys started a new air service, Transcontinental Air Transport.  He asked Lindbergh to help design a transcontinental network for him.  This brought Lindbergh to Kingman Arizona.   They had the goal of being able to  fly across the United States.  They wanted to fly from Los Angeles to New York in 24 hours.  Lindbergh first came to Kingman June 1, 1928.  This was just more than a year since he made the first transAtlantic flight.  He was looking for refueling stations along the L.A. to New York route.  To do so there would need to be regular ports.  Kingman was chosen as a site in October of 1928.  Winslow was also chosen as a site in Arizona, Clovis in New Mexico.  Lindbergh and Major Thomas Lamphier visited in January of 1929 to make final arrangements.  Construction began on March 10.  The soils was compacted and oil was applied.  Plane service through the port began on May 17 with two flights a day.  Then on July 8 of 1929 the plane "City of Los Angeles" brought Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart for the official dedication.  1000 people greeted Lindbergh that day.  The Kingman airport became the first dedicated airport in Arizona.  Over the next 20 years, during the operation of TAT  (later TWA) Lindbergh was a regular visitor to Kingman and the Beale Hotel.  The only thing remaining of the airport is the terminal building which is on Bank and currently occupied by a construction company.  The airway ran from about Beverly or the I-40 to Airway along Bank and to the west.     

After WWII the city purchased the old Gunnery Airfield and that is where the airport is today.  

Book Review: Kingman Army Air Field

 One of my regrets in moving to Kingman is we arrived too late to tour the museum at the airport that memorialized the Army Air Field.  It closed like a year before we moved here.  I went looking for it and found the hangar it had been in, but it was empty.  

I found a binder with information on the Army airfield at the Kingman Library.  This is marked reference so you cannot check it out. However they allowed me to make a copy.  It is either in the Arizona section or in the reference section.  It seems to move back and forth.  It was compiled by Bob Chilcoat in 2017.

The Kingman Army Airfield was born out of WWII.  There was such a need for an air training location that worker were diverted from the Davis Dam project to finish the airfields.  The air field was set up to teach gunnery for the B-17.  It was the sixth such school, and the largest.  The major portion was what would later become the Kingman Airport.  

The school was first called Flexible Gunnery School at Kingman.  However as of May 1943 the name was changed to Kingman Army Air Field.   The school was activated August 1942 and the first class was in January of 1943.  The classes were progressive, starting with bb gun shooting, then skeet shooting, and finally air to air shooting. It would be inactivated at the end of the war, summer of 1945, and closed Feb. 25, 1946.  36,000 gunners were trained.  

The base included all the things you would see in a small community: library, post office, chapel, movie theater, stage with base orchestra and regular dances, day room, large cafeteria, hospital, etc.  The base hosted many celebrities including Bob Hope and his troupe.  Also the Three Stooges visited.  

There were actual seven sub bases to KAAF.  This includes the main base in Kingman, the ground to ground range also in Kingman, Red Lake Field, Antares or Hackberry, Yucca, Topock, Signal and Lake Havasu.  Lake Havasu was often used as a place for soldiers to recreate in Lake Havasu.

Subsequent to this the base was converted to Storage Depot 41.  Word was received in September of 1945 of the change, and the first plane was received on October 19, 1945.  Planes from all over the world were no longer needed and many were flown to Kingman for storage or disposal.  By the end of the year there were almost 5000 aircraft in Kingman.  The highest total officially would be about 5500, however many have said there were 7000 aircraft, the highest total in the world to that point.  Mostly these were large bombers, but there were other aircraft as well.  Some were pot marked with shrapnel and barely flyable.  However there were no accidents in bringing the aircraft to Kingman.  

I most enjoyed in this collection, the article from the Arizona Highways magazine.  Here they described the final resting place and salvage of the aircraft, some of which was very important to those who flew in them.  A few were rescued, like Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb.  It is now in a museum.

This collection also has plenty of pictures.  I share a few but there are many more in the binder.

skeet shooting while moving

Kingman Storage Facility

Kingman and subbases

A training devices using movies

oxygen room, gives the fell of being at 30,000 feet

chapel

Bob Hope and crew