[CW] Flight Radio Officer Anne Morrow Lindbergh's backup radio

Sun Feb 26 16:53:17 EST 2023

More Lindbergh radio gear. 
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-media/NASM-NASM2011-00585

Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, took this 
receiver and other radio equipment on their 1931 flight to the Orient 
and 1933 survey flights across the North and South Atlantic. Because 
they were flying over vast stretches of uncharteredterritory in Canada, 
Alaska, and Siberia during their 1931 flight and Greenland, Africa, and 
Brazil during their 1933 flight, the Lindberghs relied on radio and 
navigation equipment to help them find their remote destinations.
Anne, who served as co-pilot, operated all of the radio equipment during 
the Lindberghs' two trans-global flights, performing an impressive daily 
workload, and set a telegraph transmission distance record. Prior to the 
1931 flight she worked hard to learn Morse code and earn her radio 
operator's license. She eventually became skilled at using complex radio 
equipment such as this receiver, but at first she felt she needed four 
hands to perform "acrobatics:" two to tune the dials, one to write down 
the incoming message, and one to hold her pad of paper. During the 
Lindberghs' 1933 flight, a Pan American radio operator remarked, "My 
God, she got it!" after Anne successfully received his one-hundred and 
fifty word message through heavy static.

A vacation flight with "no start or finish, no diplomatic or commercial 
significance, and no records to be sought." So Charles A. Lindbergh 
described the flight that he and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, were 
planning to make to the Orient in 1931. Their choice of route, however, 
showed the feasibility of using the great circle to reach the Far East.

The Lindberghs flew in a Lockheed Sirius low-wing monoplane, powered by 
a 680-hp Wright Cyclone. The Sirius had been designed in 1929 by John K. 
Northrop and Gerard Vultee, and this model was specially fitted with Edo 
floats, since most of the Lindberghs flight was to be over water.

Their route took them from North Haven, Maine, to Ottawa, Moose Factory, 
Churchill, Baker Lake, and Aklavik, all in Canada; Point Barrow, 
Shismaref, and Nome, Alaska; Petropavlosk. Siberia; and on over the 
Kurile Islands to Japan. After receiving an enthusiastic welcome in 
Tokyo, they flew to China. They landed on Lotus Lake near Nanking on 
September 19, thus completing the first flight from the West to the East 
by way of the North.

At Hankow, the Sirius, with the Lindberghs aboard, was being lowered 
into the Yangtze River from the British aircraft carrier Hermes, when 
the aircraft accidentally capsized. One of the wings was damaged when it 
hit a ship's cable, and the aircraft had to be returned to the United 
States for repairs.

Their next venture in the Sirius came as a result of the five countries' 
interest in the development of commercial air transport. In 1933 Pan 
American Airways, Imperial Airways of Great Britain, Lufthansa of 
Germany, KLM of Holland, and Air France undertook a cooperative study of 
possible Atlantic routes. Each was assigned the responsibility for one 
of the following areas: New Newfoundland to Europe via Greenland; 
Newfoundland via the great circle route to Ireland; Newfoundland 
southeast to the Azores and Lisbon; Miami, Bermuda, the Azores, and 
Lisbon; and across the South Atlantic from Natal, Brazil, to Cape Verde, 
Africa.

Pan American was to survey the Newfoundland to Europe via Greenland 
route. Ground survey and weather crews in Greenland were already hard at 
work when Lindbergh, Pan Am's technical advisor, took off from New York 
on July 9 in the rebuilt Lockheed Sirius, again accompanied by his wife, 
who would serve as copilot and radio operator. A Sperry artificial 
horizon and a directional gyro had been added to the instrument panel 
since the previous flight, and a new Wright Cyclone SR1820-F2 engine of 
710 horsepower was installed. Lindbergh's plan was not to set up a 
particular route but to gather as much information as possible on the 
area to be covered.

The Jellinge, a Danish ship, was chartered by Pan Am to maintain radio 
contact with the Lindberghs in the Labrador-Greenland-Iceland area. The 
ship also delivered advance supplies for them to Halifax, Saint John's, 
Cartwright, Greenland, and Iceland.

Every possible space in the aircraft was utilized, including the wings 
and floats, which contained the gasoline tanks. There was plenty of 
emergency equipment in case the Lindberghs had to make a forced landing 
in the frozen wilderness.

 From New York, the Lindberghs flew up the eastern border of Canada to 
Hopedale, Labrador. From Hopedale they made the first major overwater 
hop, 650 miles to Godthaab, Greenland, where the Sirius acquired its 
name-Tingmissartoq, which in Eskimo means "one who flies like a big bird."

After crisscrossing Greenland to Baffin Island and back, and then on to 
Iceland, the Lindberghs proceeded to the major cities of Europe and as 
far east as Moscow, down the west coast of Africa, and across the South 
Atlantic to South America, where they flew down the Amazon, and then 
north through Trinidad and Barbados and back to the United States.

They returned to New York on December 19, having traveled 30,000 miles 
to four continents and twenty-one countries. The information gained from 
the trip proved invaluable in planning commercial air transport routes 
for the North and South Atlantic.

The aircraft was in the American Museum of Natural History in New York 
City until 1955. The Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, then acquired it 
and transferred it to the Smithsonian in 1959.A vacation flight with "no 
start or finish, no diplomatic or commercial significance, and no 
records to be sought." So Charles A. Lindbergh described the flight that 
he and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, were planning to make to the 
Orient in 1931. Their choice of route, however, showed the feasibility 
of using the great circle to reach the Far East.