Aviation Buff Believes French Team Crossed Atlantic, But Crashed

On May 8, 1927, as Charles Lindbergh waited for a clearing in the fog on Long Island to launch for Paris in the Spirit of St. Louis, his rival, French World War I Ace Charles Nungesser, departed with navigator François Coli in the opposite direction. Both were seeking the $25,000 prize offered by hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first crossing of the Atlantic between New York and Paris, considered a key milestone in the development of commercial airline service.

By the time Lindbergh departed 12 days later, there had still been no sign of the French team in New York. A seldom-mentioned sideline to Lindbergh's hero's welcome in Paris is the simultaneous mourning which was underway for (pictured, L-R) Nungesser and Coli who, by then, were presumed lost at sea after last being sighted passing Ireland. Lindbergh is said to have inquired about any news of his rival after his successful landing.

But their biplane, the Oiseau Blanc (or "White Bird"), was never found. It was thought the plane might have made it to Maine and crashed in a wilderness area. Others theorized it might have crashed in Newfoundland.

The Wall Street Journal reports a French aviation enthusiast named Bernard Decré has concluded that the White Bird flew over the south coast of Newfoundland before ditching off the shore of the Canadian mainland. Last year, he discovered a 1927 US Coast Guard telegram in the US National Archives which reported sighting "a pair of joined white wings" three months after the flight. His research of Canadian Maritime weather on May 9, 1927, and interviews with elderly Newfoundlanders who recall witness accounts of the plane passing overhead, have the 71-year-old pilot, and many others in France, excited.

There are now plans to employ divers and sonar to try to locate any part of the Oiseau Blanc. Decré notes poignantly, "We want to establish the true history of the tragic end of our pilots. Then we want to answer Lindbergh's question, by saying we have now had news of Nungesser."

FMI