Seventy-nine years ago, on May 8, 1927, an overloaded airplane rolled down a runway towards a rendezvous with destiny. It lifted once, tentatively, then settled, the weight of an unprecedented fuel load dragging it down. It weighed over 11,000 pounds, quite a lot for a single-engine plane. Finally it lifted, to the cheers of nervous onlookers, and flew off, climbing painfully slowly. The plane's next landing was to be on the other side of the Atlantic, claiming the Orteig Prize.
The plane never arrived. It was l'Oiseau Blanc, the "White Bird" or "White Dove" of two wartime French aces, Charles Nungesser, 35, and Francois Coli, 45. Both men were officers of the French Legion of Honor; Nungesser, a top scorer with 44 Germans shot down, had a raft of other decorations including the British Military Cross. Coli, amazingly, took up combat aviation after serious wounds, including a lost eye, ended his career as an infantry hero. He was the first man to fly the Mediterranean Sea, in 1919; and he was skilled in celestial navigation. The two of them prepared obsessively for the mission, facing many of the same questions that Lindbergh and Byrd and the other would-be contestants had done.
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