The Nungesser and Coli transatlantic flight disappearance was a failed 1927 attempt to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. French First World War pilot Charles Nungesser and François Coli departed in the aircraft L’Oiseau Blanc, a Levasseur, one week before Lindbergh. Their aircraft crashed, turning a prize-backed bid for a landmark crossing into a disappearance whose circumstances the account does not further detail.

The Prize and the Attempt

A New York hotelier had offered $25,000 for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. The prize made the crossing a contest with a sharply defined goal: reach the other city without stopping. Nungesser and Coli took off in 1927 to attempt it, positioning their flight in the same race that Lindbergh would soon win.

Nungesser was a flamboyant French fighter pilot from the First World War, born in 1892. The account identifies Coli as his companion on the attempt and names their aircraft as L’Oiseau Blanc, a Levasseur. These details place the disappearance within the period’s conspicuous pursuit of long-distance aviation records, while the account itself supplies no further information about Coli or the plane.

Crash and Disappearance

Nungesser and Coli crashed after taking off, according to the historical note. It gives no crash site, precise timing, or account of what happened to either man afterward. The event is therefore presented as a disappearance rather than as a fully documented sequence of events; the available evidence does not establish additional circumstances or explicitly describe their fates.

Historical Record

The episode appears in a numbered historical note associated with the book’s Eighth Book. In a few lines, the note joins the prize, the aircraft, the pilots, and the failed flight, setting their attempt beside Lindbergh’s without elaborating on the contrast. The compressed account preserves the central reversal: a highly publicized bid to connect two cities nonstop ended not in arrival but in a crash and an unresolved disappearance.