Charles Lindbergh dies in a 1931 Aviation Accident

Driftless

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In the early 1930’s, Charles Lindbergh worked as a very high-profile technical advisor for Pan Am Airlines. He actively participated in route planning and aircraft design approval, along with making a number of pioneering flights in the Caribbean, Central and South America with Pan Am’s growing fleet of flying boats. The collaboration of Lindbergh, Juan Trippe (Pan Am’s dynamic CEO), and Igor Sikorsky was both a technical and marketing powerhouse.

In mid-October of 1931, While making the inaugural commercial flight of the Sikorsky S-40 flying boat (the Flying Forest), the plane piloted by Lindbergh was being refuelled at it’s scheduled stop in Barranquilla, Colombia. Lindbergh was supervising refuelling by standing atop the fabric and dope covered wing when the fuel tanks were overfilled to the point where avgas was running off the wing and spreading on the water below. Lindbergh shouted at the bystanders on the adjoining docks to extinguish their cigars and cigarettes immediately. They did so, by flipping them into the gas covered water. Historically, disaster was averted by those smokes not igniting the gas.

What might have happened IF the gas and plane went up with a whoosh and a bang and Lindbergh perishes in the conflagration?

  • What happens to Lindbergh’s aviation legacy?
  • Obviously, with the POD of 1931, Lindbergh doesn’t live to play a role in isolationism, or even his tempered admiration of the Nazi’s. How does his absence factor into those developments?
  • Impact on US military aviation in WW2, specifically Lindbergh’s work in the South Pacific?
  • Does the kidnapping of the “Lindbergh baby” occur?
  • Does the high profile disaster impact Pan Am or Sikorsky Aviation
 
With Lindbergh's wife a widow with a child, there is no kidnapping or request for ransom. The Nazis have not taken control of Germany yet, so he is not associated with them so much. His legacy will culminate as the hero who first flew the Atlantic. As for Pan Am and Pacific aviation, hard to say.
 

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My guesses

  • What happens to Lindbergh’s aviation legacy?
    • He becomes even a larger hero, with the element of tragedy.
  • Obviously, with the POD of 1931, Lindbergh doesn’t live to play a role in isolationism, or even his tempered admiration of the Nazi’s. How does his absence factor into those developments?
    • He was the heroic public "face" of isolationism and for mainstream Nazi sympathizers. It was easier for Joe Public to support both those movements when the world-wide hero was for them. However, the underlying support was there, to begin with, so there's still a strong element of isolationist sentiment and belief that the Nazi's are a strong bulwark against the Communist menace... Perhaps his absence allows the corner to be turned away from those beliefs a bit sooner?
  • Impact on US military aviation in WW2, specifically Lindbergh’s work in the South Pacific?
    • Out of my league here, but AIUI, Lindbergh performed very useful technical improvements to US Army Air Forces flight protocols (fuel management and engine performance?) during his sojourn to the South Pacific. I believe this thought pops up in Everking's estimable TL on the P-38 (along with other references on this site)
  • Does the kidnapping of the “Lindbergh baby” occur?
    • Probably not. The Lindbergh's were wealthy and famous, but Lindy's premature death might just make the kidnapping a non-event.
  • Does the high profile disaster impact Pan Am or Sikorsky Aviation
    • Pan Am was already fairly well established by this point, with both passenger and mail routes throughout the Western Hemisphere. Trippe had assiduously lobbied the political machinery in the US and elsewhere and had great financial connections. They ride out the storm. Passenger travel in general may take an incremental hit for a time, but it would bounce back. Since the disaster was a human error event, the impact on Sikorsky is probably limited as well. Might there be an earlier push for all-metal, or mostly metal construction?
  • Another point I thought of later: How would Lindy's premature death impact Anne Morrow Lindbergh's literary career? Does she start writing sooner?
 
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