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Nungesser engaged the propeller for a test.
A loud thumping noise came as the massive wooden blades began to beat at the air. Next, a screech, as Nungesser powered up and moved White Bird a short distance.
“Manifold pressure and temperature okay,” Nungesser shouted to Coli.
“Check,” Coli said.
“Control surfaces responding — fuel shows full.”
“Check,” said Coli.
“I say it’s a go,” Nungesser said.
“Confirm the go,” Coli shouted. “Next stop, New York City.”
Nungesser steered White Bird into an arc at the far end of the runway, then stopped and ran up the engines while holding the brake. The crowd had followed the plane downfield, and hundreds of people stood watching. Nungesser raised his arm over his head and as far out of the cockpit as he could, then waved to the crowd.
“Au revoir,” he shouted.
He pushed the throttles forward and started down the runway. It was 5:17 A.M.
André Melain watched White Bird roll past, then followed with the tractor. From his perch atop the tractor, he had a better view than most of the crowd. White Bird was gaining speed and passed the one-mile marker. Slowly, the plane inched skyward, then sagged back onto the runway. A collective sigh ran through the crowd. A hundred yards farther and the tail wheel was far off the ground. Suddenly, Melain could see under the belly of White Bird as she climbed foot by foot from the runway. A mile past the end of the runway and the plane was only seventy feet in the air. Then he saw what he was watching for — Nungesser dropped the landing gear, which fell through the dim light to the ground below.
Melain set off in the tractor to retrieve the prize.
“Coast ahead,” Nungesser shouted.
Coli marked it on a chart. “You are right on course.”
White Bird passed over the English Cha
Nungesser stared at the gauges. All seemed in order. He headed toward Ireland as he thought of his past. His had been a life of challenges and adventure. As a teenager, he had favored boxing, fencing, and swimming — all individual sports. As a young man, he’d found school oppressive and his desire to be outdoors almost overwhelming. At sixteen, he had quit school and convinced his parents to allow him to visit an uncle in Brazil. The uncle had resettled in Argentina, and it would be nearly five years before Nungesser found him, but in Brazil
Nungesser indulged in his love of mechanical things. He began to race motorcycles, and later automobiles, supporting himself with his increasing skills as a mechanic. He gambled, boxed for money, and lived the life of a bon vivant, but still something was lacking. He began to feel bored with his life and bound to the earth.
A few years later, he traveled to Argentina to locate his uncle. There he found the passion he had sought so long. Visiting an airfield one day, he approached a pilot who had just landed. He explained to the man that he was an accomplished automobile racer and thus felt qualified to fly — and the man laughed him off as if he were the village idiot. The man went inside, and Nungesser climbed into the cockpit, roared down the runway, and lifted off. After a short flight, he approached the runway and touched down. The owner of the plane was not so much angered as amazed.
In that instant, Nungesser became completely enamored with flying.
After a few weeks of flying lessons and a stint barnstorming in Argentina, he returned to France just as the winds of war began to howl. After a brief time in the cavalry, he wrangled a transfer to the air service and began a distinguished, if dangerous, career. Nungesser loved aerial combat and approached it with a passion that bordered on foolhardiness. After crashing many times, shooting down forty-five German planes and getting wounded seventeen times, he ended the war with a chest covered with medals, a plate in his head, and a silver ankle.
But after the thrill of war, his civilian life seemed sedate and ordinary.
He suffered financial setbacks and failed endeavors. After traveling to the United States, he barnstormed and starred in an early silent movie, but the fame and adoration he sought were slow in coming. All that was soon to change.
As soon as he and Coli made New York City, it would all be his.
“We should see Ireland in the next few minutes,” Coli shouted.
Coli, too, had felt the tug of flight. After switching from sea to air, he had been commander of an aircraft squadron during the war. Where Nungesser was foolhardy, Coli was persistent and methodical. As soon as he agreed to attempt the flight, he had insisted that they rigorously train and plan for the event. The men began a program of physical fitness using barbells, medicine balls, and light ru
After he had finished, he poured one for Nungesser and handed it forward.
“Shoo,” the white-haired man said quietly.
Shamus McDermott sat on a rocking chair just outside the door of the net maker’s shop at the port of Castletown Bearhaven, Ireland. A few moments before, he had fed the fat, yellow tabby cat at his feet a sardine, and now the animal would not leave him alone. A lifetime of cod fishing had taken its toll on McDermott. The cold, hard work had given him arthritis, and the hand pain and phantom aches from the missing ring finger on his left hand never seemed to leave him nowadays. He would turn seventy years old this fall, and his days of working were eight years past.
These days, most of his time was spent watching and waiting.
In the mornings, he would head to the port and see the ships off. At night, he would wait for their return, then share a pint with the working fishermen. After a few tall tales and the dispensing of mostly unwanted advice, he would return to his small stone cottage to make di
“That’s a strange sight,” McDermott said to himself and the cat.
Two thousand feet overhead, a stark white plane approached from the east. It continued over the town and out to sea in a relentless pursuit of some faraway location. McDermott watched it recede into the distance.
“Like a fine white arctic plover,” he noted happily.
Then he rose from the chair to walk inside the shop to notify the others.
The time was five minutes before noon.
“Reset to eleven A.M. local time,” Coli shouted at the moment the chart showed they had crossed the time line.
“Affirmative,” Nungesser said.
The Irish isle was no longer in sight. For the next thirteen hours, their only companion would be an endless expanse of open water. Coli stared at the sea below. From his vantage point thousands of feet above, he could make out small whitecaps on the ocean. The sea was breaking east. The predicted tailwinds had shifted.
“What’s she feel like?” he shouted to Nungesser.