Long Island
The Plot Against AmericaLong Island frames Charles Lindbergh’s 1940 cross-country campaign as both a return to the scene of his greatest aviation achievement and a new departure into politics. From the airfield where the Spirit of St. Louis had begun its transatlantic flight, Lindbergh set out westward across the United States; after visiting all forty-eight states, he returned to the same runway in late October.
The Historic Airfield
Thirteen years after Lindbergh’s celebrated transatlantic flight, he arrived without announcement at the Long Island airfield from which that journey had begun. His appearance there replaced the campaign launch planned for Detroit’s Labor Day parade. The Spirit of St. Louis had been brought to the field secretly under a tarp and kept overnight in a remote hangar, turning the site into the staging ground for a carefully anticipated departure.
The Campaign Takes Flight
By the time Lindbergh taxied the plane onto the field the next morning, reporters from wire services, radio stations, and newspapers across New York were waiting to witness the takeoff. This time his flight headed west, toward California, rather than east across the Atlantic. The familiar runway and aircraft joined the memory of the pioneering aviator to the public spectacle of the presidential campaign.
Departure and Return
Long Island also supplied the tour’s endpoint. Over the next month and a half, Lindbergh spent a day in each of the forty-eight states, traveling between cities, towns, villages, and remote rural communities. In late October, he returned to the Long Island runway from which he had departed on Labor Day weekend. The return gives the campaign a geographic frame: the airfield first reopened the public image of the Lone Eagle, then received him again after that image had been carried across the country.
