Knights Without Parachutes
A Blog of Great War Stories
What Happened to Nungesser's Attempt to Beat Lindbergh Across the Atlantic
At the Dawn Patrol Rendezvous, during a meeting of the League of World War I Aviation Historians, William Nungesser spoke about his famous relative Charles Nungesser including whatever happened to his attempt to fly the Atlantic. Nungesser was one of those in a close race with Lindbergh, who took off ahead of him, but disappeared somewhere and was never heard from again.
Or was he?
In what makes a very believable conspiracy theory, William Nungesser revealed that 30 years of research on his relative led him to an island off the coast of Newfoundland where Charles Nungesser presumably went down, but nobody knew it because it was hushed up by the government. And why would the government bother to hush it up? Because it was Prohibition, and this island was involved in rum-running - bringing in illegal alcohol. Al Capone often stayed there. So the last thing anyone wanted was a whole bunch of media activity going on around this island. So Nungesser just "disappeared."
One moral of the story would be, if you're in trouble and need to land, don't involve criminals in the rescue effort or there might not be one.
