Why San Diego International Airport Changed Name from Lindbergh Field

The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh by Candace Fleming; Schwartz & Wade Books of Penguin Random House LLC © 2020; ISBN 9780525-646556; 372 pages including bibliography, source notes and index; $18.99.

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — Written for high school students, this biography of Charles Lindbergh underscores the wisdom of the decision in 2003 to change the name of Lindbergh Field to San Diego International Airport. Lindbergh used his deserved fame as the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic to spread race hatred against many of the peoples who live, like San Diegans, around the Pacific Rim.

The Spirit of St. Louis, in which he made the historic 33 ½-hour flight, was built in San Diego by 35 employees of Ryan Aircraft under the supervision of chief engineer Donald Hall. To carry as much fuel as possible, Ryan’s standard aircraft design was altered with extra gas tanks put in front of the pilot.  This meant that if Lindbergh wanted a better view of where he was going, he had to stick his head out the window. Everything Lindbergh considered non-essential was stripped from the plane to lessen the weight. So intent was Lindbergh on trading poundage for more fuel, he declined to pack a parachute. “That would cost almost twenty pounds,” he told Hall.

Hall and Lindbergh worked on the plane tirelessly, day and night, because to the aviator who could fly from New York over the Atlantic to Paris would go a $25,000 Orteig Prize and a place in history. But however great was their camaraderie up to his May 20-21, 1927, flight, Lindbergh dropped Hall from his list of friends after his success brought him into the company of millionaire hobbyists, European royalty, and others of a higher socio-economic class.

Charles Jr., the first child born to Lindbergh and his wife, the former Ann Morrow, and later found dead in a crime that riveted the nation.  He was 20 months old.  Bruno Hauptmann was convicted in 1935 and sentenced to death for the murder. Reporters and ordinary people surrounded the Lindbergh family home, climbed in trees, took photos, and tore off souvenirs, turning the family’s tragedy into a circus, embittering Lindbergh against America’s disorderliness.

Meanwhile, he worked with Nobel Prize winning biologist Alexis Carrel to develop a perfusion pump by which human organs could be kept alive outside the body—a first step toward organ transplantation.  Carrel’s belief in the eugenics theory that humanity could be improved through selective breeding was imbibed by Lindbergh, who later became an admirer of the racist theories of Hitler and the Nazis.

When Lindbergh toured Germany in connection with the 1936 Olympics, he was honored by that country and was impressed by the orderliness of the crowds, who greeted him, in contrast to the mobs that gave him no peace in his own country.

Lindbergh came to believe that rather than France and Britain fighting Germany, the three European countries should unite against the West’s “true enemies,” which he described as the “Asiatic hordes” of Russians, Chinese, and Japanese.

In a radio speech, he elaborated: “It is the European race we must preserve; political progress will follow. Racial strength is vital; politics a luxury. If the white race is ever … threatened, it may then be time for us to take our part in its protection, to fight side by side with the English, French and Germans, but not with one against the other for our mutual destruction”

As a leading spokesman for the America First Movement, which sought to keep the United States out of World War II, Lindbergh suggested President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the embattled British, and American Jews were manipulating the United States into war against the Germans, whom he admired for their orderliness, precision, and racial identity.

“The Jewish races … for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in this war,” he said during a speech at the Des Moines Coliseum on September 11, 1941—about three months prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, which precipitated U.S. entry into the war. “We cannot blame them [for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we must also look out for ours.  We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction

At this point, author Candace Fleming inserted her own commentary.  “Other peoples?” she questioned.  “Charles was saying that Jewish people living in this country were not Americans, but others—a group living within the United States with no allegiance to the nation”

After the U.S. entered the war, Lindbergh tried to reactivate his commission as a colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps, but he was blocked from doing that by the Roosevelt administration, which considered Lindbergh to be dangerously pro-Nazi.  Lindbergh was able, however, to fly escort missions as a civilian in the Pacific Theatre against the Japanese, which was more to his liking in any event.

This biography makes clear that while he was a great aviator, Lindbergh’s racism disqualified him from being the face of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic San Diego.

*
This story is republished from the Journal of San Diego History, on which Harrison serves as a member of the editorial advisory board.  He is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World.