A Degree of Error

At 5.15am on July 17th 1938, Irish-American pilot Douglas Corrigan taxied his dilapidated Curtiss Robin OX-5 monoplane onto the runway of Floyd Bennett Field, an airfield in Brooklyn, New York City, in preparation for a flight to Long Beach, California. At a little over 2,800 miles, the journey westward across the United States would take, Corrigan calculated, about 27 hours. However, he took off in an easterly direction at the request of Kenneth P. Behr, manager of the airfield, so as to avoid having to fly over the administration building at the westerly end of the runway.

On July 18th, after a journey of 28 hours and 13 minutes, the tiny aircraft landed. To his apparent consternation however, Corrigan soon realised that he was not in Long Beach, California, but almost 6,000 miles away at Baldonnel Aerodrome, County Dublin, Ireland. Douglas Corrigan had just crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a rickety old crate of an aircraft! So what went wrong? Did he just forget that he had taken off in an easterly direction and simply failed to turn around?

For those inclined to believe Corrigan, that is exactly what he maintained happened. However, as you might imagine, all was not quite as it seemed. In 1935 Corrigan had made an application to the Bureau of Air Commerce for permission to make a non-stop transatlantic flight from New York to Ireland, but his application was rejected as his aircraft was deemed to be unsatisfactory for such a flight, although he was able to obtain a lower standard of certification permitting him to make cross-country journeys only.

Despite his best endeavours, which included the installation of a more powerful 165-horsepower engine in place of the original 90-horsepower motor, additional fuel tanks and other significant modifications, each of his subsequent reapplications for full certification of his aircraft were refused, as the ageing plane was deemed to be unsafe. Indeed, it would appear that the Bureau of Air Commerce were not wrong, as on the inbound flight to Floyd Bennett Field, Corrigan’s aircraft developed a fuel leak. Astonishingly he took the decision to press on with his plans, as he considered that the leak was not too bad, and he was also of the opinion that repairing it would take too long. The very real possibilities of his plane exploding mid-air or running out of fuel during the flight did not seem to bother the single minded Douglas Corrigan!

About 10 hours into his flight, Corrigan felt his feet were getting cold and realised that the leak was getting worse and that, consequently, gasoline was starting to pool in the floor of the cockpit. His solution was to use a screwdriver to make a hole in the floor on the opposite side of the plane from the scorching hot exhaust pipe, so as to let the fuel drain away in comparative safety. He also elected to increase his airspeed by around 20% in order to decrease the time he would need to spend in the air. This course of action has led many to suspect that he knew he was flying over the ocean, as a more prudent approach to the situation, if flying over the United States, would have been to seek out a local airfield to land at and effect a repair.

Obvious comparisons were drawn with Charles Lindbergh, the aviation pioneer who had made the first transatlantic flight 11 years earlier. There were, however, a number of significant differences between the two achievements. Contemporary journalist H. R. Knickerbocker (yes, that really was his name!) wrote the following in 1941:

“You may say that Corrigan’s flight could not be compared to Lindbergh’s in its sensational appeal as the first solo flight across the ocean. Yes, but in another way the obscure little Irishman’s flight was the more audacious of the two. Lindbergh had a plane specially constructed, the finest money could buy. He had lavish financial backing, friends to help him at every turn. Corrigan had nothing but his own ambition, courage and ability. His plane, a nine-year old Curtiss Robin, was the most wretched-looking jalopy.

As I looked over it at the Dublin airdrome I really marvelled that anyone should have been rash enough even to go in the air with it, much less try to fly the Atlantic. The nose of the engine hood was a mass of patches soldered by Corrigan himself into a crazy-quilt design. The door behind which Corrigan crouched for twenty-eight hours was fastened together with a piece of baling wire. The reserve gasoline tanks put together by Corrigan, left him so little room that he had to sit hunched forward with his knees cramped, and not enough window space to see the ground when landing.”

Despite breaking numerous flight regulations his punishment was extremely lenient; his pilot’s certificate was suspended for just 14 days! Upon his return to the United States by steamship, he was given a ticker-tape parade on Broadway which attracted more people than had turned out to honour Lindbergh. He was also honoured with an additional ticker-tape parade in Chicago.

Such was his popularity that, in addition to his autobiography, he also starred as himself in a film biography entitled The Flying Irishman in 1939. He also endorsed a number of ‘wrong-way’ products such as a watch that ran backwards!

Douglas “Wrong-Way” Corrigan, as he was thereafter known, died on 9 December 1995 at the age of 88. He was buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana. Up until his death he always maintained that he had made his transatlantic flight by accident. Yeah – right, if you say so Doug!

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Corrigan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh