Existing comment:
Since San Diego was supposed to be the "air capital of the West," aircraft manufacturing might fit the city as well as the Navy did. The next person to help prove this proposition was Claude Ryan, a former Amy pilot and barnstormer who had established the first year-round regularly scheduled passenger airline and airmail service in the US (between San Diego and Los Angeles) in 1924. When this failed two years later, the company concentrated its efforts on designing and building aircraft at its plant on Dutch Flat -- a former tuna cannery. Ryan's big break came in 1927, when he received an order to construct what amounted to a "flying gas-tank" for Charles Lindbergh's attempt to win a $25,000 prize for the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris.
The epic flight thus originated in San Diego, at the very location that became San Diego Municipal Airport, and later Lindbergh field. On his way to New York and the official start of prize-winning transatlantic flight, "Lucky Lindy" broke the existing speed record for a flight across the United States. Eight days later, he took off for Paris, his Ryan-built plane carrying him 3,600 miles in 33-1/2 hours.
Lindbergh's successful exploit turned him into an instant global icon and made Ryan Aviation famous too. According to a Ryan biographer, orders for the M-1, the model on which Lindbergh's plane, The Spirit of St. Louis, was based, now came in to the company from all over the world. Ryan formed a new enterprise, Ryan Aeronautics, the following year, and over the next four decades created numerous functional designs with military as well as civilian applications. The Teledyne Corporation bought his company in 1969 for $128 million. |