Corrigan and his co-workers went wild when the news reached San Diego that Lindbergh had made it to Paris. The workmen jumped into their cars and drove through the streets of the city, shouting like madmen. But Douglas Corrigan was more than ecstatic–he was inspired. He decided then and there that he wanted to fly across the ocean.

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Ryan Aeronautical had built what was now the most famous plane in the world, and all of a sudden business was booming. The factory moved to St. Louis in October 1928, but Corrigan stayed in California and got a job as a mechanic for a new flying operation called the Airtech School, run by the San Diego Air Service. Once it got started, the Airtech School was busy with more than 50 students in training each day. The only chance Corrigan got to fly was on his lunch hour.

He loved doing stunts, especially chandelles–steep, climbing turns–that he would start as soon as the plane was off the ground. Corrigan would often do 10 or 11 chandelles in a row. The company pilot thought he was crazy; when Corrigan stepped out of the plane, the other flier would read him the riot act. Corrigan would just look surprised. ‘I didn’t think it was dangerous,’ he would say, smiling innocently.

But the company pilot won out, and Corrigan was forbidden to do stunts in the company planes. Corrigan subsequently stopped stunting near the airfield. Instead, he flew down to a small field near the Mexican border and did stunts there.

Corrigan went to New York with a friend in 1930, working at Roosevelt Field for a while and barnstorming along the East Coast. He and his partner would land near a small town and talk people into buying airplane rides. Business was pretty good–they sometimes took in as much as $140 a week.

When Corrigan decided to go back to California in 1933, he started looking for a plane in which to make the trip–a cheap one, since he didn’t even own a car. He soon found a Curtiss Robin priced at $325. ‘It looked pretty good, and flew all right,’ he said. He started out for the West Coast a few days after buying the plane. He would stop every 100 miles or so and pick up passengers when he could find them, in order to make a little money while he was traveling.

Once, when he was running low on gas, he passed over several towns without finding a field that looked good enough for a landing. He finally came down in a field that was overgrown with brush. It was a rough landing–one of the wheels hit a tree stump, damaging the landing gear.

Luckily, there was a farmyard nearby. Corrigan walked over, found a few pieces of wood and cut some wire off a fence–all he needed for some quick repairs. He borrowed some gasoline from a farmer’s tractor and flew on after his repair work was completed.

Corrigan returned to San Diego and worked in an aircraft factory for a while, but that did not satisfy his zest for adventure. He decided to refurbish his Curtiss Robin and pursue his dream of flying across the Atlantic. He knew that attempting such a flight might kill him–but he was sure it certainly would not be boring. Since he was Irish American, Corrigan naturally chose Dublin as his destination.

He bought a new engine for his plane–a Wright J6-5 with 165 horsepower and five cylinders. He also built and installed the extra gas tanks that he would need if he were to attempt a transatlantic flight. As far as he was concerned, Douglas Corrigan was all set to be the first man to fly nonstop from New York to Dublin. But it was not to be that simple. When a federal inspector checked out the plane, he licensed it for cross-country flights only.

But Corrigan refused to give up. In 1936, he flew to New York, stopping over at St. Louis on the way. Then he wrote to the Federal Bureau of Air Commerce, asking for permission to go ahead with the flight. For no apparent reason he was told to wait until the following year. Then he was told that he would need a radio operator’s license to make the flight–even though his plane had no radio.

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