Spirit of St Louis

[Pat Carry]

I was watching the Spirit of St Louis with Jimmy Stewart on TCM the other night. I always enjoy seeing this movie but I have a few questions about the flight for those of you in the know. Roosevelt Field from where Lindberg took off, what is there now? Once the Spirit of St Louis was brought back to the US onboard the USS Memphis (CL-13), did it ever fly again? Did they make a full size replica of the plane for the movie? Where is it now? What happened to Ryan Aircraft, the company that built the Spirit of St Louis? Thanks in advance.

[Airplanejunkie]

1:Wall Mart (as well as other stores. They're just north of the Nassau Colleseum and the Cradle of Aviation Museum.

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=40.740429&lon ... 20airfield

2: I believe the airplane did a national tour when it got back to the US.

3: Don't know about the movie plane but there are several full size replical out there.

4: Ryan is still in business as a subsidiary of Teledyne Continental.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Aeronautical

[k5083]

The NYP was flown for about a year in North America and Latin America after the transatlantic flight, hence all the flags on the cowl.

For the Jimmy Stewart movie, three replicas were converted from Ryan B-1 Broughams. In some ways this is unfortunate as the Brougham is a historic airframe in its own right and most of the survivors have been converted to represent NYPs at one time or another. One of the movie replicas is displayed at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn MI and another at Cradle of Aviation in Long Island.

August

[b29flteng]

One of the non-flying replicas is/was hanging from the ceiling of the Mpls.-St.Paul IAP terminal

[rreis]

The original is at the NASM

http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/arti ... 9280021000

[aeroeng]

Lambert Field here in St. Louis had a replica hanging in the main terminal building till the late 90's. Not sure where it got moved to.

aeroeng

[k5083]

The wikipedia entry for the Spirit lists about a dozen static or flying repros that exist, although I think it may have some of its movie facts and other details wrong.

August

[Pat Carry]

Thanks for all the info. I should have guessed that a Walmart occupies the site where Lindberg took off. Is there any type of historical market at the site now?

[APG85]

A complete listing of all of the flights of The Spirit of St. Louis including flight times can be found in the back of Lindbergh's book The Spirit of St. Louis (fantastic book incidentally).

Details of the movie "Spirits" and their conversion can be found in the book The Spirit of Ryan. There is also information about Ryan Airlines and what became of it...

[JBoyle]

Thanks for all the info. I should have guessed that a Walmart occupies the site where Lindberg took off. Is there any type of historical market at the site now?

The field was torn up for a shopping center long before WalMart was around...or at least when it was still a local store in Arkansas.

One of the replicas was made out of a Ryan Brougham bought from early antiquer Skeeter Carlson out of Spokane, Washington. He dealt directly with Paul Mantz on the deal.

Also, the movie predates Tallmantz...back then it was just Paul Mantz. Tallman didn't join until Dec. 1961. The film was made in 1957.
According to Scott Thompson's Tallmantz website, Tallman is not listed as being involved in the film.

Now, Tallman did build a replica for the US pavillion for the 1967 Paris airshow which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the flight. That replica was lost in the San Diego museum fire in the late 70s. Details on that ship are found in Tallman's book.

[rreis]

I think there are some Ryan photos on the Grumman factory photo thread?

[APG85]

There is a historical marker at the site of the former Roosevelt Field commemorating Lindbergh's take-off. There is also a huge plaque on the exterior of the building where the Spirit was built...

[rreis]

Found them! Oh, I do like any excuse to re-visit one of the best threads on WIX

viewtopic.php?p=133792#p133792

[APG85]

The location of the Ryan Airlines plant:

http://www.johnfry.com/pages/PhotoRozelle37.html

A nice picture of the Lindbergh marker at what use to be Roosevelt Field is on this message board/forum:

http://www.oshkosh365.org/ok365_Discuss ... picid=3728