The airman was then carried shoulder high to a building, where the American Ambassador (Mr Herrick), with the Minister of Labour (M. Failliere) were waiting to welcome him.
After receiving their congratulations, Captain Lindbergh, who was a very tired man, was placed in Mr Herrick's car and driven to Paris.
Crowds had been gathering since early afternoon, and the scenes baffle description. The roads leading to Le Bourget were jammed with motor cars.
Captain Lindbergh made a wonderful landing. Searchlights lighted up the 100,000 faces watching the approaching plane, which was immediately surrounded by the crowd when it landed. Sentries and police were knocked down in the crowd's eagerness to welcome the airman.
Sir Alan Cobham said that Captain Lindbergh's endurance was the most wonderful feature of the flight.
"How he managed to stay awake and keep his machine on its course almost passes my comprehension. He must have a constitution of iron, and absolutely no nerves."
Captain Lindbergh, in conversation with the United States Ambassador, said that, though the weather reports were most favourable when he started, he soon ran into a snowstorm. Frozen snow settled on the machine. This added considerably to its weight.
A deadly fog deprived Captain Lindbergh of the sight of water for hours on end. One disaster nearly overtook him. He was sweeping downward, when he discovered that he was just a few feet from the waves.
A comparison of the time taken by Captain Lindbergh and by Alcock and Brown, who flew from Newfoundland to Ireland in 1919, shows that the American averaged 107 miles an hour, and the Englishmen 118.
Captain Lindbergh slept for 11 hours, and in the meantime the authorities diverted vehicular traffic from the neighbourhood of the American Embassy, which nevertheless was thronged all day. Telegraph messengers arrived in an unending stream and hundreds of bunches of flowers filled a large room.
The journalists were unable to secure a connected story until Sunday, when Captain Lindbergh consented to a joint interview in the hall of the Embassy. He spoke quietly and with an utter absence of "side."
The airman explained that owing to the construction of the aeroplane he could not look out ahead. He could only see to the front by means of a periscope, though his view to left and right was uninterrupted. He carried no lights, as all the dials were luminous.
"I made the whole flight close to the schedule planned," he said; "but I had a good deal of luck in it. I flew by dead reckoning, and it brought me to the coast of Ireland within three miles of the great circle. The fact that I only saw the light of a single ship was due to a lot of fog. To tell the truth, I was horribly bored, and was never in the least sleepy. Everything was in my favour, except that I encountered sleet, which is capable of forcing an aeroplane down in a few minutes.
"One sleet storm was of such violence that I almost decided to turn back. It was full daylight when I struck the Irish coast.
"The remaining 600 miles were simple, and I was eating my last sandwich when France hove in sight. I instantly recognised Cherbourg ... Thence towards Paris I could see the searchlights 30 miles away."
It seems that Captain Lindbergh used a simple schoolboy's map across France, which only indicated the chief ports, the lines of railways and Paris.
- May 24