1938: Douglas Corrigan claims his place in the annals of aviation history when he "mistakenly" flies from New York to Ireland. With a single flight, Corrigan breaks the law, charms the Irish, becomes an American hero and earns an unforgettable nickname.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/07/dayintech_0717

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Cajun76,

Very cool.

This guy must've had some Cajun blood in him:

Corrigan's plane had fuel tanks mounted on the front, allowing him to see only out of the sides. He had no radio and his compass was 20 years old. As the journalist H. R. Knickerbocker reported:

“ As I looked over it at the Dublin airdrome I really marveled that anyone should have been rash enough even to go in the air with it, much less try to fly the Atlantic. He built it, or rebuilt it, practically as a boy would build a scooter out of a soapbox and a pair of old roller skates. It looked it. The nose of the engine hood was a mass of patches soldered by Corrigan himself into a crazy-quilt design. The door behind which Corrigan crouched for twenty-eight hours was fastened together with a piece of baling wire. The reserve gasoline tanks put together by Corrigan, left him so little room that he had to sit hunched forward with his knees cramped, and not enough window space to see the ground when landing. ”


There's a reason they don't have Cajun built aircraft. They'd have screen doors, pontoons made from two pirots and painted John Deere green and yaller.

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

What he flew:

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

I guess they hadn't invented duct tape back then. That would have made his plane safe. It has many practical uses.