All About Pocket Knives

. . . Charles Lindbergh left Long Island en route to Paris. The rest is aviation history.

1967redrider wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 7:44 pm . . . Charles Lindbergh left Long Island en route to Paris. The rest is aviation history.

Thanks for the reminder, John, he was a giant of a man.

Cool old picture, Ike.

Ninety -eight years from crossing the Atlantic to space travel being passe’.

Some specifications about The Spirit of St. Louis-

What an interesting topic. You wonder what was going
through his mind during and immediately after that
flight. Now that would make a great interview.

Bob

Thank you very much Redrider for the details of a great story. I love the engineering details right down to the chewing gum to hold the mirror.
As always Thank you to Ike for finding a great picture to go with it.
Steve

After Lindberg's historic flight and his return to the US, he embarked on a tour of the US with the Spirit of St Louis. One of his stops was in Renner South Dakota on August 27th, 1927. Renner is a small town a few miles north of Sioux Falls that at the time had a large open area that was used as an air field for various aircraft including mail planes. There was a crowd of 30,000 people there that day and among the crowd was my Grandpa, my Dad, and another kid who was a friend of my dads who lived on a nearby farm. That young mans name was Joe Foss. This is the Joe Foss who was a fighter pilot ace in the Pacific during WWII, first commander of the South Dakota Air National Guard, Governor of South Dakota, first commissioner of the American Football League, President of the NRA, and has a larger than life bronze statue in the concourse of our local airport called Foss Field. Joe was just one of untold numbers of young men and women who were inspired into a career in avation by Lindberg's flight. I have the large collection of old family photos and a few months ago while going thru them, I happened upon a photo which by the size of the picture was taken by my dads old folding Kodak camera. It is a picture of Joe Foss taken on the family farm NE of Sioux Falls in 1942 and in the photo Joe is in full military uniform. This would have been when he was home on leave before he was assigned to the the Pacific war in his F4F Wildcat. While he was home during that time, he married his girlfriend, and the picture was quite possibly taken with him in uniform that day. It is interesting to follow some of the obscure threads of history and how they progressed.

Very cool story, OC.

Second RR,
Very cool story OC.